Jake Manning, Faith and Courage, ink and acrylic on vinyl, 12 x 9, 2022
JAKE MANNING:
Lazy River
Curated by Wells Chandler
JULY 30 - SEPTEMBER 3, 2023
Opening: Sunday, July 30, 6-8pm
The Time Traveler journeys in a sea of memory. Mainlining Sinéad O’Connor’s Faith and Courage he encounters Alvin and the Chipmunks, Fassbinder and various bodhisattvas - omniscient buoys to keep him centered as he floats up and down the learning tree. Amongst the friendly faces, impish demons lurk. Pain and gentleness churns with pleasure, curiosity and discovery. There is something deeply human about the works of Jake Manning. Hazy familiarity echoes and reverberates the way a faded scar marks the body. Play is central to Manning’s experimentally expansive oeuvre. I remember that moment and it felt just like this. Tactile materiality is the gateway to the prelinguistic clarity of these psychologically charged works. A flood of memories live in and activate the painting’s surface like a swirling whirlpool. Radio jingles hang in the air. Non hierarchically stacking the vernacular with a modernist agenda, Manning levels masculinity and heroism through humility, absurdity, craft and tenderness. Empathetically relational to each other, these porous works co-exist in their unencumbered immediacy. Chaotic choreography tap dances like Charlie Chaplin across the wall. Straightforwardness is simultaneously sweetly naive and brutally honest. Manning’s facility with a wide swath of subjects fused by a spectrum of materials and generous portions of paint, offers potent possibilities for drawing and painting to be and exist.
Soloway is pleased to present Lazy River, a solo show of works by Jake Manning curated by Wells Chandler. Lazy River opens Sunday July 30th with a reception from 6-8pm and runs through September 3rd. A zine of Manning’s work will be available for purchase.
-Text by Wells Chandler
Jake Manning was born in Texas. His mother’s favorite activity involved frequenting the waterpark, where her now deceased husband used to work, to float around the artificial river. Manning is a recent MFA graduate of Purchase College where he was selected to attend The Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg in Germany from 2022-2023. In 2017, he graduated from Portland State where he received The Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize, an award from the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation recognizing excellence in visual art. His work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Soloway (Brooklyn, NY), Tif Sigfrids (NY, NY) and Nationale (Portland, OR) and in group shows at the Portland International Film Festival, Grifter, and NADA NY with Rental Gallery.
