Apr 25

Jeremy Starn

Jeremy Starn is a painter, sculptor, photographer, and curator who has exhibited across the eastern seaboard, especially the Northeastern United States. Featured solo exhibitions include shows in New York and Connecticut at Photographic Expressions and Noelke Gallery. His extensive exhibition experience in the Boston, Massachusetts metropolitan area include participation at AREA Gallery, 6 Bridges Gallery, Subsamson Gallery, and Boston Center of the Arts. Notable awards include a distinguished artist award from ArtAscent and best in show recognition at Lesley University. Publications include features in the Hartford Courant, Litchfield County Times, Superpresent magazine, and Displacement photo book.

The works tend to portray rough and even crude surfaces. He incorporates strange industrial materials such as tar and joint compound and varnishes his works with shellac, an insect-secretion clear coat substance. The art seems to be influenced by geological, geographic, and topographic surfaces, Jeremy even has a series of works which are digital alterations of captured satellite images which reflect similar patterns to his purely abstract paintings. His sculptures can range from elegantly structured to crude and barbaric containing drips of tar or rough strips of material dangling from the surface.

You Make A Map (pictured above) remains one of Jeremy’s most brutish works. The painting may come off as a total abstraction however in fact remains a depiction of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Coming across as rustic and metallic, the painting appears smeared upon with intricate variations of texture. Ranging from metallic blues to rustic earthy tones, the work represents a sense of metallic sheen. If the viewer did not know the work was a painting, the audience could mistaken the art as a rustic sheet of metal pulled off an aged vehicle or large appliance. The junkyard, industrial aesthetic of the painting imposes pure grit and removes our comfort zones.

Moving on to Jeremy’s sculptures, A World of Plastic and Metal (top of article) remains a non-objective piece in the shape of an exoskeleton. The plastic, which could be tarp, plastic bags, or both, remains confined and contained within a circular cage of steel. Although coming off as painted, upon closer inspection the tones on the sculpture are the natural manufactured coloring of the plastic and materials. The sculpture almost comes off as crumpled up tissue paper crushed into a ball. An aesthetically pleasing work with bright colors which differs from the more direct and confrontational industrial pieces. His sculptures sometimes have a sociological context such as in the case of When Humans Used Fossil Fuels, They Transformed The Earth (pictured below). The three-dimensional piece depicts tar crudely dripped onto an asymmetrical exterior form made of gas station maps suspended from the air. An allegory towards dependency on fossil fuels and aging technologies.

Jeremy Starn’s confrontational approach leaves an intellectual commentary on the purpose of surface and texture. Unlike other artists in the catalogue who focus on design elements, Jeremy portrays random, inconsistent surfaces based on topography or humanistic impulses. These controlled structures in impulsive and fractured compositions represent raw human emotion and interpretation. While much of contemporary art tries to portray pristine formations, Jeremy boldly and bullishly presents art which reflects the more industrial and exposed side of contemporary life and analysis.