ELSEWHERE.

A body of work premiered at the University of Miami's Wynwood Gallery by Jessica Dehen as her Master of Fine Arts solo exhibition. Curated by the artist herself, it features large-format mixed-media paintings and silkscreen monoprints. Dehen’s vivid works recontextualize the artistic ideals, innovations, and methodologies of the “New York School” Abstract Expressionists filtered through the hyper-saturated lens of a millennial painter. Dehen seeks to subvert today’s cultural trend of merely experiencing art through a screen or device and alternatively strives to reinvigorate the necessity of one’s physical presence when experiencing a work of art. Like her Abstract Expressionist predecessors of the mid-20th century, her work explores automatism, the process of making, and materiality as both content and form… but alternatively during a ‘digital age’ where everything is accessible, and anything is reproducible. While inspired by the stains of Helen Frankenthaler, the scrawls of Cy Twombly, and the bold gestures of Willem De Kooning, rather than adopting such styles as her own, Dehen alternatively refashions these AbEx “micro-moments” in a way that they can all simultaneously coexist within a single picture plane.  Dehen attributes her affinity for vibrant color schemes to being a native South Floridian, where she was raised during the rise of an over-saturated “filter culture.” Growing up during an era where adjusting a color’s vibrance, saturation, and hue has become a collective cultural norm, Dehen often finds herself juxtaposing synthetic hues alongside the naturally vibrant colors that surround her. While her paintings may not literally render namable objects or places, they are nostalgically reminiscent of both Abstract Expressionist painting and her sub-tropical upbringing, mirroring the intensity at which she perceives (and manipulates) color.