The Measure of Enjoyment

Riffing on favorite themes of play and pleasure, LEAH ROSENBERG explores a place for painting that is colored by both failure and potential. Building on years of paint-driven exploration, she uses paint as practice, as meditation, as object, and as environment.

Courting, the 12-minute video the artist made for the exhibition, begins with Rosenberg in her studio pouring, drying, slicing, and wrapping layers of paint into brightly colored orbs reminiscent of fruit or balls. As the subject of the film, she both creates and reimagines her work in the world. The film follows her around San Francisco searching, through improvisation and play, for the purpose of these paint balls. Transported to various places that might seem an appropriate or familiar setting, the balls are put into action — rolled and lobbed, tossed and gathered —  their use and uselessness revealed.

These paint balls also appear in the gallery, posed around the space and on a custom-made see-saw bench, as if in conversation.

For JEREMIAH JENKINS, the title “The Measure of Enjoyment” conjures up questions of value. Our sense of value stems from our primal roots and extends through centuries of programming from multiple civilization, he says. His work reflects some of the key issues that he sees.

Ideal Landscape is an oil painting of a landscape that is being consumed by flashing electric lights that pour from a gas can, mimicking fire. Psychological research shows that people are drawn to images of landscapes that include elements that they would find appealing in terms of survival — a water source, easily climbable trees, a possible food source, even landscape sheltered by mountains. The artist complicates this equation through his playful and darkly humorous use of materials.

A Jabob’s ladder is a well-known device, named for the ladder to heaven described in the Bible, that demonstrates the tendencies of high voltage between two conducive elements. For his piece Jacob’s Teaset, Jenkins courses 12,000 volts of electricity through a serving tray and gold-lustered tea set, seen in purple flashes of light when pieces of the set connect. The irony of this piece is that Jenkins has converted objects meant to be handled intimately into ones that are too dangerous to touch.

The Commemorative Series uses the Japanese tradition of kintsugi, or repairing broken ceramics with gold. For these pieces, Jenkins intentionally broke a collection of commemorative plates, figurines, and other “fine objects” and then haphazardly reassembled them and added gold. The works challenge ideas about preserving history and marking use when the ceramicware being repaired is meant primarily for display.

Vanitas and Vandalism similarly highlights fragility. The concept of vanitas is well known in 17th-century Dutch still life paintings, which were meant to show the transience of all things and the fleeting nature of life. For this piece, Jenkins has scratched a Dutch vanitas painting into the surface of a large mirror in the style of graffiti vandalism. A bowl of granite rocks is offered for viewers to add to the drawing over the course of the exhibition.

Also related to transience, Pendulum marks time with a chandelier that swings just overhead. Suspended from a grandfather clock installed in the rafters, the piece evokes equal parts laughter and panic as viewers steer clear of the swaying light fixture.