When Josephine Halvorson finds her subject, she stops just long enough to paint it. It could be numbers on the siding of a railroad car, a sign taped to a tree trunk, the dark spot where a sign once stood, or the ledge of window. His work can be divided into two periods. Between 2007 and 2018 she painted in oil on canvas, often using a dark, tonal palette, and she was apparently never more than an arm’s length from her subject. Although she remained close to her subjects, her palette and brushstroke changed after she began painting with acrylic gouache on absorbent backgrounds. Addressing the change on his website, Halvorson released this statement:
Inspired by fresco paint’s ability to retain color and mark, I wanted to create a sensitive surface that preserves my observations in real time. Painting by hand, I work in a style of truth, documenting subtle shifts in shadow and thought. I want to make a painting that remembers better than me.
Halvorson’s desire for her paintings to be synonymous with “real time” means that she cannot go back over a work as she would with oil paint. Every mark she makes is indelible.
In a boston globe article (July 28, 2021), Cate McQuaid quotes Halvorson on her use of acrylic gouache: “I go back to my way of painting. Faster. What I would now call a report. The news it brings us is not about news, but about the individual and collective psyche in the face of death and technological advances.
As someone who has followed and written about Halvorson’s work for over a decade, I think his current exhibition, Josephine Halvorson: Unforgettable, to Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (March 17-April 18, 2023) is its strongest yet. She achieved a sharper clarity in her work and expanded her inventory to include a wide range of objects, from inexpensive ballpoint pens to plastic flowers. Halvorson is an observational painter, whose depictions of things seen but not seen relate to the cycle of consumption and waste that informs every part of our lives. She has an uncanny ability to focus on mundane objects – a roadside memorial made up of plastic flowers, a graffiti sign, or her dead father’s desk – as a way to speculate on the connection of art and life, vulnerability and challenge, and the effect of time and history on the things we get, use and throw away.
“Peony” (2022), the largest work in the exhibition, consists of 25 panels measuring 13 inches by 16 inches, joined in five equal rows. The center panel is an overhead view of a white peony at the peak of its bloom. In six of the remaining panels, Halvorson depicted the peony at different times and from different angles. A stem or leaf in one panel may shift slightly as it continues into an adjacent panel. Radiating from the central panel, “Peony” does not present the cycle of his life. The bright, saturated greens she uses are a far cry from the olive and moody green she used when painting in oils. While the subject of “Peony” is the effect of passing time, Halvorson does not focus solely on the flower and depicts its inevitable decline. It preserves different moments and points of view. The multi-panel format is something new for her.
In the square painting “Last Words” (2022), Halvorson uses the shallow frame favored by trompe-l’oeil artists such as John F. Peto and John Haberle to commemorate his home-made plywood desk and wall. father. Due to COVID-19, she was unable to see her father when he passed away. A large clock, just right of center, presides over the composition. Below is an unused calendar, open through July 2018. Nearby, a piece of paper on a bulletin board reads: I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU. Who said that? What was the context? People who would know are apparently missing, but the office looks like it has been in use for years.
Halvorson takes care of every business card, take-out menu, pen, paperclip, key ring and key in “Last Words”. It is hand painted which means she paints every detail rather than providing an abridged version. Odd details are included, like a classic Kiwi shoe care kit that reads: Norman Rockwell Commemorative Edition.
Painting is a visual archive of a small part of a person’s life, as well as a record of things before they were discarded or reused. Is one of the purposes of a painting to bear witness to a life? Attentive to the shadows and reflection on the clock’s glass covering, Halvorson invites the viewer to contemplate all the ways we mark and experience time, and how much of what we record and store we will end up disposing of. Does she mean “Last Words” is her father’s will?
In addition to exploring her father’s office, Halvorson has spent time in New Mexico, where in 2019 she was the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s first artist-in-residence. “Points of Interest” (2022) is a heavily graffitied panel with various names appearing. One reads “Santa Clara Pueblo,” where ceramic artist Rose B. Simpson is a registered member and resident. Painting what she sees, Halvorson shows us the continued perpetuation of colonialism and the desire to erase the other. At the same time, the various beacons achieve a scriptural beauty.
In “Buried Barrel”, “Army Heater” and “Disconnect Box” (all 2022), Halvorson depicts outdated and abandoned things. They are relics of earlier technology. We live in a world where obsolescence is part of the process. This process, which is intrinsic to capitalism’s notion of progress, is one of the reasons why she chooses those things that are abandoned, forgotten and mute; she wants us to think about how they affected those who built them. What is the human cost in a society based on efficiency and obsolescence?
In “Roadside Memorial” (2021), we look at plastic flower stems stapled to the base of stripped tree trunks. (Technically speaking, Halvorson’s ability to convey that flowers are plastic should give us some idea of his growing mastery of the medium.) A sacred candle with the Virgin of Guadalupe imprinted on the glass holder rises from behind three rocks , which were arranged to hold a medallion. The medallion reads: “Friends are the flowers of the garden of life”.
‘Important Notice’ (2023) reveals a side of Halvorson I’ve never seen before: dry, macabre humor. A torn, yellowing ad is pinned to a twisted bulletin board that has seen better days. Under “Important Notice” we read:
The management regrets that it has come to their attention that employees dying on the job are failing to fall down. This practice must stop as it becomes impossible to distinguish between death and natural movement itself. Any employee found dead in an upright position will be dropped from the payroll
Everything in the painting is simple, while everything in it is quirky, bizarre and inexplicable. Who posted this? The bulletin board, hung at an angle, appears to have been abandoned in an unused office space. How does the meaning change now that it is no longer used, having died in an upright position? Circumstances change and the meaning of things changes. Halvorson is sensitive to this.
Josephine Halvorson: Unforgettable continues at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (530 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) through April 18. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
