Jeni Spota C: Encore!

Saturday, January 13–Sunday, March 31, 2024

Opening Celebration: Saturday, January 20, from 2 to 5 PM

In her thickly impastoed paintings, Jeni Spota C. explores her own Italian heritage and the power of religious imagery by obsessively reworking scenes from Giotto’s 14th-century monumental fresco The Last Judgment. Spota C. abstracts her figures and collapses the neat order of Giotto’s fresco, merging the zones of heaven and hell into chaos. Jeni Spota C: Encore! unites three bodies of work, putting the artist’s earliest and most recent works into conversation, alongside a series that references Spota C.’s great-uncle, a magician, to consider the relationship between painting and magic, myth, and illusion. 

Jeni Spota C: Encore! was curated by Weisman Museum director Andrea Gyorody in close collaboration with the artist and with assistance from Nicelle Beauchene, New York.

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jeni Spota C. (b. 1982) lives and works in Long Beach, California. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. Solo exhibitions include Brennan & Griffin, New York (2016, 2013, 2010); Don’t Tread On Me, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, California (2009); and Giotto’s Dream, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2008), among others. She has been included in group exhibitions at FLAG Foundation, New York (2023), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2021); Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara (2021); DePaul Art Museum, Chicago (2017); Misako and Rosen, Tokyo (2017); Saatchi Gallery, London (2016); Jewish Museum, New York (2015); Venus Over Manhattan, New York (2012); Luxembourg & Dayan, New York (2011); Josh Lilley, London (2011); Parrish Art Museum, Southampton (2010); and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York (2009), among numerous others.

 

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Opening Celebration

Saturday, January 20, from 2 to 5 PM at the Weisman Museum

Join us to celebrate the opening of our spring exhibitions, Makoto Fujimura: Water Flames and Jeni Spota C: Encore! on Saturday, January 20 from 2 to 5 PM, with complimentary refreshments and kid-friendly art activities in the courtyard. Jeni Spota C. will be in conversation with Weisman Museum director Andrea Gyorody at 4 PM in the galleries; seating for the conversation is limited and will be first come, first served. Registration for the reception is recommended but not required at the link above at the top right.

 

 

Image credit: Jeni Spota C., Mistakes, 2008, oil on canvas. Collection of Drs. Paul and Sara Monroe. Image courtesy of the artist and Nicelle Beauchene, New York © 2024 Jeni Spota C.