#jeff sonhouse

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ARTIST: Jeff Sonhouse

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Jeff Sonhouse

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He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 1998 and his MFA from Hunter College in 2001. He won the Joan Mitchell Foundation award and the New York Foundation for the Art prize in 2004. He had solo museum exhibitions at the Atlanta Contemporary Art center, and the Francis Young Tang teaching museum and art gallery at Skidmore College. Most of his portrait paintings of dark figures have been put in galleries over the years throughout his career. 

He uses a lot of bright colors and geometric shapes in his work, going against the natural shape of the bodies in the paintings. His work represents African-American identity and masculinity. While combining traditional portraiture with vivid color, and geometric shapes. He often makes his paintings of masked black male figures which are presented in the front and painted very close-up. His painting, the son of hypocrite (2008), represents African history and culture, while other portraits of his are of political figures or historical jazz record covers.

While his work is very similar in style and composition, what from his work could be impactful to viewers?

What is the message that Jeff Sonhouse’s work sends the viewers?

What do you think is the significance of the bright vivid color geometric shapes over the figures faces?

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"Augustine's Mauvism" de Jeff Sonhouse avec des allumettes brûlées (2021) à l'Opera Gallery, octobre 2022.

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Jeff Sonhouse (American, b. 1968), Bispatial Sibling, 2021. Oil, acrylic gel medium, pumice gel, and galvanised wire on canvas, 80.75 x 57.25 in.

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Jeff Sonhouse’s latest exhibition, “Pawnography,” explores the role of the black male in today’s shifting socio-political climate.

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Jeff Sonhouse / Papi Shampoo, 2010.

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Return to Sender, 2018, Jeff Sonhouse

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

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ARTIST Jeff Sonhouse (born New York, New York, 1968)

TITLE A Bipolar Faith Captured in Front of a Microphone

CREATION DATE 2005

MATERIALS oil, mixed media on canvas

Tang Museum

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By Jeff Sonhouse

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Works by Glenn Ligon from '30 Americans' (4th edition)⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Nationally celebrated as one of the most important exhibitions of contemporary art in the US within the last decade, '30 Americans' showcases an influential group of prominent African American artists who have emerged as leading contributors to the contemporary art scene in the US and beyond. The exhibition and accompanying catalog explores the evolving roles of black subjects in art since the 1970s and highlights some of the most pressing social and political issues facing our country today, including ongoing narratives of racial inequality; the construction of racial, gender and sexual identity; and the pernicious underpinnings and effects of stereotyping.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Many of the artists in this exhibition interrogate how African Americans are represented, politicized and contested in the arts, media and popular culture. Several are driven by the exclusion of black subjects in art throughout much of history and celebrate and glorify black subjects through pictorial traditions including genre painting and portraiture.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ In addition to essays by Robert Hobbs, Glenn Ligon, Franklin Sirmans and Michele Wallace, this expanded fourth edition contains new artworks and 22 commissioned writings by artists in the exhibition about artworks in the catalog, including pieces by Nina Chanel Abney, John Bankston, Mark Bradford, Nick Cave, Robert Colescott, Noah Davis, Leonardo Drew, Renée Green,Barkley L. Hendricks, Rashid Johnson, Kerry James Marshall, Rodney McMillian, Wangechi Mutu, William Pope.L, Rozeal Shinique Smith, Jeff Sonhouse, Henry Taylor, Hank Willis Thomas, Mickalene Thomas, Kara Walker and Kehinde Wiley.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Order from your local independent bookstore! Moreover, consider supporting a #blackownedbusiness and buy from a #blackownedbookstore. A list of them is here: https://manylink.co/@artbook. You can also order through many of these stores via Bookshop.org.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ #30americans #glennligon @glennligon @rubellmuseum https://www.instagram.com/p/CBf2x1djmR6/?igshid=akzwwadpk635

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by Jeff Sonhouse , 2006

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Portraits that Feel Like Chance Encounters and Hazy Recollections

Portraits that Feel Like Chance Encounters and Hazy Recollections

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, “Bring Yo’ Big Teeth Ass Here!” (2017) (all images courtesy the artist and Rhona Hoffman gallery)

MADISON, Wis. — Nathaniel Mary Quinnis one of the best portrait painters working today and the competition is steep. Think of Amy Sherald, Elizabeth Peyton, Kehinde Wiley, Nicole Eisenman, Allison Schulnik, Mickalene Thomas, Jeff Sonhouse, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Chris Ofili,…

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Painting workshop with Beata Chrzanowska @b_money_baby this Saturday at 1! Purchase your seat by Tuesday evening to be guaranteed a spot. $45 & all supplies provided. Check link in bio & click on workshops. ....... Creating Balance is a workshop about turning a painting into a masterpiece by demonstrating how color, composition and weight can be implemented to create balance. Students will work on a large, collaborative piece with the instructor and then break off to work on individual canvases. This workshop is for painters of all skill levels. The class size is very small, allowing students to get one on one instruction from the artist among a small group of fellow artists. Originally from Poland, Beata Chrzanowska has lived most of her life in Chicago. She ​received her BFA from​the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design where she studied Integrated Studio Arts with a focus in painting and drawing the human form. She then migrated to New York where she continued an active career in the arts painting from her studio in Queens. Before her move to New York she had participated in multiple shows and organizations all around Milwaukee. Among those were Jackpot Gallery, Foxglove Gallery, Gallery M, and the Borg Ward. In New York she had the opportunity to work for artist Mickalene Thomas on her Brooklyn Museum and Lehmann Maupin shows and Jeff Sonhouse on his Jack Tilton show. She also had the chance to show at Fowler Arts Collective, ArtHelix, Gallery Bar, Studio 200 and recently had her third solo at Contesta. Currently back in Chicago, Beata actively participates in group shows around the city and has exhibited at various galleries including Elephant Room Gallery, Jackson Junge Gallery and AM/FM Gallery. Beata's work is​ compositionally, chromatically and geometrically conscious. They are puzzles that she builds from a single figurative line drawing. Once the first colors are placed, every additional color is affected until a compositional balance is created. (at Elephant Room Gallery)

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Jeff Sonhouse (American, b. 1968), Project Science, 2003. Oil and matches on canvas, 121 x 122.6 cm.

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Hyperallergic: Inventive, Mysterious Paintings that Exceed Expectations

Jeff Sonhouse, “Wobbling Occupants Ripe for Distortion” (2017), oil and acrylic gel medium on canvas, 78 3/4 x 84 1/8 x 2 1/2 inches (all images courtesy the artist and Tilton Gallery, New York)

I’m convinced that one really only needs one of three things to make a good painting: compelling content, skillful facture, or formal innovation. When I find two of these criteria in a work, then I feel I’m looking at a very good painting. When all three show up, I have something that exceeds my expectations. This is the case with Jeff Sonhouse’s exhibition, Masked Reduction, presently on view at Tilton gallery. It’s staggeringly good.

Jeff Sonhouse, “Repeat Offender” (2017), oil, steel wool, and copper wool on fiberboard with artist’s frame, 99 5/8 x 63 5/8 x 3 1/4 inches

I could take my pick with where I want to start entering the work, but I’m most drawn to the characters. One in particular recurs. He wears an enormous hat, has wide, full, deep chocolate lips and a fey, dispassionate gaze, and his headgear, clothing, and skin are often depicted in a harlequin pattern. In some cases his face is like stone, in others it displays a smile like a deranged grimace in its infancy. I don’t know what this character is, but he’s part superhero, part trickster figure, and part Delphic oracle, with a touch of Ru Paul. But I still don’t think this description sufficiently captures how uncanny he is, how much he exceeds the templates I’ve suggested. I felt so curious I asked the artist how the character came to be, and Sonhouse replied that he took the harlequin pattern from Picasso, but the rest consist of an amalgam of images from men’s fashion magazines. In “Repeat Offender”(2017), more of his body is depicted than in the other paintings, and here it is wrapped in a skin-tight yellow unitard with a superhero’s musculature showing through. He is extravagantly weaponized. He holds a shotgun in one hand; others twirl behind him, and his penis is itself a shotgun facing upwards, aligned with his torso. It has seemingly just been discharged straight underneath the figure’s chin and jaw, producing a cloud of smoke that emerges from the painting as steel and copper wool affixed to the canvas. Researching older work of his I realize that Sonhouse has applied steel wool to his paintings before, in various ways. However, seeing for the first time in person this kind of melding of coarse materials with smoothly sleek paint in a surreal narrative of psycho-sexual, perhaps onanistic drama that (refreshingly) focuses on black characters, I have to imagine that in his paintings anything can happen.

Jeff Sonhouse, “Witness Protection Program” (2017), gouache, watercolor, and acrylic gel medium on paper; framed dimensions: 25 1/2 x 21 3/8 x 2 inches

In terms of the workmanship, Sonhouse’s style is so clean it verges on being illustrative. I didn’t see any brush strokes. This works for him because the characters and scenes are so exactingly and beautifully rendered that the works become rabbit hole illusions I’m happy to fall into. More, throughout the exhibition Sonhouse blends his concocted surreal scenes with inventive, painterly surprises. For example, in “Wobbling Occupants Ripe for Distortion” (2017) a shadow becomes a hem of drapery that the main character, whose skin is completely harlequined in black and white, lifts up to reveal a nude female figure. The surprise is in the character’s hair and beard which is made into a three-dimensional shrub built up from the canvas with acrylic gel — it gets the visual attraction of thick, black, negro hair correct. The painting makes me think that when the term “black is beautiful” was first uttered, someone was likely looking at an afro in full bloom glistening in the sun.

Installation view of Masked Reduction at Tilton Gallery

The exhibition is just acutely intelligent all the way through. With other works, Sonhouse gets meta-discursive. In “Anointing of the Pistol” (2017) and “First Quarter Reportage” (2017) Sonhouse gives the viewer the sketches, the bits and pieces of the characters and scenes he has refined over time, the latter piece like a mood board or visual archive in which one can pick out the cultural themes and icons that provide the raw material for the paintings. These pieces give the viewer a window into his process, and thus aren’t shy about revealing how much this work is artifice. I appreciate that these paintings can be beguiling and that be understood as a strength rather than a fault of the work.

Jeff Sonhouse, “Grafted Populist” (2017), oil on paper, framed dimensions: 73 5/8 x 66 x 2 inches

I very rarely say this about exhibitions that I review, but this one is absolutely worth seeing. It is one of the most visually rewarding shows I’ve experienced this year.

Jeff Sonhouse’s Masked Reduction continues at Tilton Gallery (8 East 76 Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan) until October 28. 

The post Inventive, Mysterious Paintings that Exceed Expectations appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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