The Mildred Complex(ity) and
A Guide to the Field
JEFFREY JENKINS
Angles of Repose
April 30 through May 31 / Closing reception, May 28, 202137b Main Street, Narrowsburg, NY 12764
Jeffrey Jenkins’ Angles of Repose, is an ongoing project involving photography and collecting in both the natural and the man-made landscape. A cross-country expedition in 2019 resulted in a series of dramatic photographs documenting the geologic oddities known as balanced rocks. Seen as a kind of gravitational locus, they draw the visitor in differently from traditional landscape viewpoints, reminding us that time is relative and gravity is forever. Balanced rocks are not only the face of deep time clocks and balletic defiers of inevitability; they are also the ruins of vast landscapes once above us, now gone to sea. This geologic manifest destiny mirrors our own incessant need to move through and shape the environment. We have erected monuments, both iconic and utilitarian, as outliers in the landscape, and these too are integral to Jenkins’ photographic documentary.
In addition to the large-scale subjects is his taxonomy of the more overlooked isolated rocks found throughout our human-altered landscapes. These more humble touchstones, whether decoration or detritus, are part of our ecological and cultural record. Another facet of this project is the collecting, geotagging, and photography of small colored stones found anonymously spray-painted on the ground. These accidental artifacts are apparently directional markings indicating utilitarian rights of way. They are like mysterious breadcrumbs, leading us into landscapes both unknowable and of our own making and now, seen here, mimic (and perhaps mock) traditional rock and mineral collections.
Jenkins will also display a selection from his collection of hundreds of vintage rock postcards.
image above / Big Boy, Fishhawk Fire Wyoming, 2019 / 40" x 30" / HD C-print Acrylic Mount
Balanced Rock, Idaho 2019 / 28.5”x 38” / B+W Archival Giclée
Jeffrey Jenkins is an artist and graphic designer living and working in NYC and the Northern Catskills. His work examines the intersection and overlap between perception and interpretation of the natural world and the methodologies used in its control and understanding. His collections-based work explores anonymous art & photography as well as artifact form & function and the consumer experience.
Jenkins has exhibited artwork in the U.S. and Europe since the 1980s and has maintained a graphic design studio for 25 years. He has designed brand identities and promotional material for a range of corporate and non-profit clients and has designed books and artists’ catalogs, often using his photography to illustrate them and he published the recently released David Sedaris Diaries, A Visual Compendium. He is working on a number of books that examine and celebrate both the anonymous photograph and his collection of over 13,000 vintage natural history postcards.