JORDAN EAGLES - NEW BLOOD PAINTINGS

Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art is pleased to present new works by New York-based artist Jordan Eagles in his West Coast solo début exhibition.

Despite widespread opposition to his art, Eagles has used animal blood in his multidimensional works for nearly a decade.  Capitalizing on the material’s unique chromography and reflective and refractive qualities, these new works – many on a monumental scale – explore themes of regeneration and the physical and intangible connections between body, spirit and nature.  

"I liked a series of cow's-blood paintings preserved in resin by Jordan Eagles, which are so mysteriously beautiful they look like photographs," says the New York Times (Dec. 9, 2007).

"As seemingly ghoulish as the impulse appears on paper, in person, Eagles and his work are anything but macabre… Light reflects off its smooth, hard surface, but it also penetrates the work's interior, bouncing through resin and pigment before spilling out again," writes "The Village Voice" (Aug. 17, 2006).

 

Eagles applies blood to clear and white Plexiglas and then permanently preserves the organic material with layers of resin, allowing the high-gloss surfaces to suspend the fluid, organic forms.  The renderings often resemble inkblot test patterns, cellular details as well as large-scale photographic images of planets.  In the presence of light, the blood's translucency is revealed under and between the multiple layers of clear resin, retaining and vibrating the light and illuminating pools of reds/blacks and proteins with sealed-in air bubbles– the results are remarkably luminous and often breathtaking as the blood permanently maintains its rich color and natural texture.

Eagles’ work has been featured in The New York Times, Village Voice, Architectural Digest, and Baltimore City Paper, and is currently on view at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT.  

Photographs and high-resolution .jpegs available on request to the gallery.