March 3-9 2020, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, NYC

 

Once a nation of producers, Americans have become consumers: a land of extreme excess. A similar parallel can be drawn with the excessive making and consuming of images.
 
Because she does not want to participate in such a process anymore, Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster paints. She works with glass and silver as they are remnants of her former photographic practice. Glass emulating emulsion. It acts as a vehicle on which to make photographs and its container. Silver serving as the foundation of analog photographs, the root of nearly all images made before the dawn of the digital age.
 
The NY-based artist’s paintings reference the snapshot and family album. However the use of quotidien images is part of a larger scrutinization of American culture and its visual language.
 
Since World War II, much of America has seen itself as the apex of success and wealth. Through the course of the late 20th century and into the 21st, this reflection has begun to fade. Meals are “super sized”, children registered for digital detox, all to the tune of a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week newscast that recites “breaking news”.
 
Returning to paint analog images is an escape from our current reality. It is reassertion against the titans of the ever-growing technology that rules our lives and a navigation of her own sense of American identity within the history of photography.