Neil Jenney

I’m governed by nature. Anything I do, I want it to feel natural.
—Neil Jenney

Gagosian is pleased to present paintings by Neil Jenney from his recent series Modern Africa (2015–)—a subseries of the New Good Paintings (2015–)—and the preceding series, Good Paintings (1971–2015).

Jenney is committed to exploring, and ultimately transcending, realism as both style and philosophy—a project first sparked by the preponderance of Pop-themed Photorealism in late-1960s New York. Having designated his early work “Bad Painting” (a term coined by Marcia Tucker, director of the New Museum, New York, in 1978) and his output after 1970 “Good Painting,” he continues to challenge familiar models of taste and subject matter while pursuing a meticulous and highly idiosyncratic approach to the representation of culture and place.

As with proto-Surrealist writer Raymond Roussel’s fanciful travelogue Impressions d’Afrique (Impressions of Africa, 1910), Jenney’s approach to his subject in the paintings on view is rooted in personal imagination, and in Western fantasies about the continent. Although these paintings are landscapes, they eschew sweeping panoramas in favor of more intimate, even introspective scenes. But despite his pictorial restraint, Jenney’s series addresses fundamental conflicts between nature and civilization, and reflects a concern with our deteriorating environment.