Statement
Jordan West’s work is a chronicle of the individual in the socially constructed, human-built, and natural environment; specific encounters of place, time, and of personal history. He works to reduce and clarify description of place and experience, a stylized representation of reality, memory and narrative, a mechanical facsimile, a simulacrum; while maintaining a reflection of the notions of fate, the sublime, isolation, dream, memory, vision, and history. Although West presents this work as a personal study of the ennui, angst, and isolation of the individual in contemporary society, culture and the built and natural environment; he endeavors to extract the self, the artist, from the work, in a minor degree, in order to present a less subjective, more neutral index of an environment, of a memory, without a complete loss of the actual experiential framework; a balance of formal reduction and empirical representation which will allow for a more generalized, expansive interpretation, and individual experience of the work, by the viewer. Jordan West makes allowances for the viewer to place themselves in the work, to introduce their own associative memories and experiences, their own notions of time and place, to create their own narrative of the painting.
Bio
Jordan West (b. 1969 in Wyoming, USA) lives and works in New Mexico. He is a self-taught artist who studied Evolutionary Social Psychology, Philosophy, and History at Hunter College in New York City. His work challenges notions of collective memory and place, using the painted medium specifically to provide an archaeology of the present, images devoid of human presence yet haunted by their conspicuous absence.
I have never considered my work to be of the place where I presently live, nor of anyone place in particular. However, I will admit that my work most likely represents an American experience. I like to think of myself as somewhat of a Social Scientist; a Sociologist observing people, an Anthropologist traveling with notebook, an Archeologist making field sketches. I have never wanted to be specifically associated with any one particular school or movement of art or thought. I feel more compelled to create work that represents a more generalized experience of the potential viewer and as an individual artist.
Consideration
Jordan West’s work is ours, we own it...West presents his experience to us, the viewer, of a specific time and place, at once familiar, common and unsettling; but what we come to own, while viewing the work, is our own memories, our own experience, prompted and triggered by his reflective considerations and physical projection of image onto canvas. We become a partner his own personal history, observations and obfuscated intimacies.
West lifts the heavy hand of the artist and allows one to recall their own memory, thoughts, feelings and experience; to construct their own narrative. He invites us into the work; thus, we become involved, vested, we gain ownership and equity in this shared analogous experience.
West claims an effort, in practice, to extract the self, the artist, from the work in order to allow the viewer to create their own narrative, a more expansive space in which to interact and recall. However, the index of the artist is very present. He leaves behind just enough of the artist’s reference, the artist’s journey and the painter’s labors and process to remind the viewer that he is the chronicler; he is the one sharing this moment and generating the dialogue. The application of paint, the draftsmanship, the composition and color all remind us of the artist. He works in a manner-of-hand, no mechanical aids or simplifiers, no production shortcuts; with a rigorous conceptual support and framework. One is left later, when going to the office or gym, driving along the highway, shopping, thinking...
This feels like a Jordan West painting.
These Are Places Where We Have Been.
@dukedokk, 2021