Grubbs Gallery Presents Jessica Tam

Colossus, ink on acetate, 20 x 25 in., 2014 Jessica Tam
Colossus, ink on acetate, 20 x 25 in., 2014 Jessica Tam

In the Gallery: January 6-28:
Reception: Saturday, January 9 from 1:30-3:30 p.m.

In her gallery-wide installation, “Welcome to the Jungle,” featured in Northampton’s Oxbow 04Gallery over the summer, Jessica Tam’s wrestling figures twisted and flexed, their bodies thrown against one another.

Her painting covered the gallery walls—some 80-feet in length—with contrasting and overlapping images of men, an audience, window panes, a referee, limbs, agonized faces.

In January, Ms. Tam will bring her abstract works, based on sensationalist popular culture, to the Grubbs Gallery for the first show of 2016.

Untitled (from Launch series), oil on panel, 24 x 48 in., 2013 Jessica Tam
Untitled (from Launch series), oil on panel, 24 x 48 in., 2013 Jessica Tam

The violence in professional wrestling, and other cultural references, fascinates and inspires Ms. Tam. As she noted in a recent artist statement, Ms. Tam emphasizes “varied ways to reflect on even the most marketed and repetitive entertainments by presenting them through series of mutating images.”

Ms. Tam has exhibited work in New York at Schroeder Romero, The Painting Center, and Slag Gallery as well as in Chicago at LG Space. She has been an NEA Fellowship Recipient at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and was the Al Held Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She received a BA from Dartmouth College, a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. This fall, Ms. Tam has been teaching and working as the visiting artist at Knox College, where she also teaches.

More of her work can be seen at www.jessicaJtam.com

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