Jill Greenberg “Paintings”

Bau-Xi Photo is pleased to present “Paintings,” a bold new series by photographer Jill Greenberg. Known internationally for her playful portraits, signature lighting, and post-production techniques, Greenberg now experiments with paint as her photographic subject, a venture that radically challenges ideas about medium, process, and originality. These “paintings” are single-edition archival pigment prints that study the interaction between light and the painted surface. Glossy, wet smears of gouache ooze toward mounds of dry, powdered pigment in a lively textural exchange; brushstrokes are blown up to reveal complex combinations of multi-dimensional colour. The final photograph—and the sole artistic object, since Greenberg destroys the original—flattens the surface of the initial painting, crops its organic form, and magnifies its properties. Greenberg’s resulting images are intense visual stimuli that seem to push paint to its absolute limit as it begins to verge on the surreal. “Paintings” is a series of engrossing images that at once indulge and deny the senses, revealing provocative surfaces in which paint and photography are each other’s muse.