JDJ is thrilled to participate at The Armory Show with a solo presentation by Barrow Parke. The artist duo will present a suite of new paintings on hand-woven and embroidered fabric, works on paper, and a site-specific wallpaper installation.
Installation View, Barrow Parke, The Armory Show 2024
Barrow Parke, Pangaea, 2024, Acrylic and Embroidery on Hand Loomed Linen, 25 5/8 x 25 5/8 in
For Barrow Parke, weaving is a way of thinking.
Originating at least 10,000 years ago and coinciding with the first cultivation of plants to produce food, weaving marks one of the first examples of complex thought. And as such, weaving is the genesis of abstract knowledge requisite for nearly every subsequent development of civilization—language, mathematics, and science, among others.
Barrow Parke, American Songbirds, 2024, Colored Pencil and Gouache on Paper, 12 5/8 x 9 in
Barrow Parke, American Songbirds, 2024, Acrylic and Embroidery on Hand Loomed Linen, 27 3/4 x 17 3/4 in
Barrow Parke tease out these connections in new works on view here: the classifications and hierarchies in the universe to the structures of myths; the logic of computer and graphic technologies; the exploration of how the foundational knowledge on which all intellectual progress is based was almost certainly female. Other work focuses on botanical pattern motifs as signs of these primordial, conceptual beginnings and on animals that are able to surpass the capabilities of human thought.
Barrow Parke, Rosetta, 2024, Acrylic and Embroidery on Hand-Loomed Linen, 13 7/8 x 17 7/8 in
Barrow Parke, Straw Woman, 2024, Colored Pencil and Gouache on Paper, 10 5/8 x 8 1/4 in
Barrow Parke, Straw Woman, 2024, Acrylic on Hand Loomed Linen, 23 3/4 x 17 3/4 in
There is something innately essential and human in the structure of weaving. The ubiquity of weaving’s thought patterns reverberates through almost any subject one can think of. For Barrow Parke, this makes it the ideal system through which the artists approach their practice and the world at large.
Barrow Parke, Fish Don't Exist, 2023, Colored Pencil and Gouache on Paper, 14 5/8 x 16 3/8 in
Barrow Parke, Fish Don't Exist (detail), 2023, Acrylic and Embroidery and Hand Loom Linen, 27 1/2 x 35 1/2 in
This is the first presentation of new works by Barrow Parke following their debut solo museum exhibition Systems and Mythologies at the University Art Museum (UAM), Albany, NY and the release of their eponymous book co-published by the UAM and JDJ. With essays by art historians Robert Shane and Zoe Stillpass, the publication dissects the last fifteen years of the artists’ oeuvre.
Barrow Parke, Pangaea, 2024, Colored Pencil and Gouache on Paper, 17 5/8 x 18 1/4 in
Mark Barrow (b. 1982) and Sarah Parke (b.1981) live and work in New York City. Their work has been recently exhibited at JDJ | The Ice House, Garrison, NY; La Capella Cavassa, Saluzzo, Italy; Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; White Columns, New York; Le 109, Nice, France; ZERO..., Milan; Galerie Almine Rech, Paris and Brussels; and Elizabeth Dee, New York.
