RESURFACING
Jeffrey Jenkins
The Mildred Complex(ity)
37B Main Street / Narrowsburg / NY 12764
November 7 through December 11, 2022
Reception for the Artist/ December 3 / 4 PM – 6 PM
In Jeffrey Jenkins’ recent work, Resurfacing, unexpected areas of his nonagenarian mother’s Longmont, Colorado home are illuminated solely by the light of projected 35mm slides taken by his father in the 1960s and 70s. Found in a box stored under a bed, the recently uncovered archive revealed connections to both memories and identity, linking both photographers to their shared interests and individual perceptions.
Like a theatre constructed in the subconscious, the house in the post-midnight hours offered unconventional niches and vestibules to project his late father’s views of the world once again. The thin, ephemeral images of the past were painted onto the architectural surfaces of our present, mixing time and place in surreal juxtapositions. The exhibit is arranged much like a proverbial paternal slide show, with images recurring at a continuous and measured rate.
The vintage slides included images of activities and family members, typical of amateur photos of the era. His father, an astrophysicist, college professor, and aspiring photographer, captured the banal domestic scene, scientific observation, and framed view of nature. Images of the sky and the landscape were interspersed with family vacations, technical star and solar system photos, and NASA-sourced images used in his lectures. (There is even a slide of a frolicking nude, reputedly inserted into his colleagues’ lecture slides as a prank.) For Jenkins, the photos of nature and anonymous places were of particular interest, suggesting connections to his work in similar genres.
With the unexpected death of Jenkins’ brother during the same time as this project, the nostalgic considerations of his father’s images were given a more poignant weight. All three men have spent their lives pursuing insight into the natural world through creative and scientific endeavors. With this genealogical foundation of visual and conceptual experiences, the evolving nature of time, place, and family are unexpectedly represented once again on the walls of a darkened home.
Untitled, (Mom Napping), Early 1970s / 2022 / 28 x 38 / Archival Giclee Print