Sea View is pleased to present The Noise Upstairs, the LA debut exhibition of Canadian-born, New York-based artist Jane Corrigan (b. 1980, Shawville, Quebec).

Jane Corrigan’s existential paintings live within the unfurling purgatory of adolescence, navigating the growing pains between dreams and reality. Feminine and unsexed figures grapple with an internal and external world that, like them, is rapidly changing.

Inspired by horror films, personal memories, and the paintings and drawings of Honore Daumier and Francisco Goya, Corrigan’s atmospheric paintings explore the development of a certain character on a journey towards independence over several compositions. Interactions with ghosts, sentient skeletons, possessed animals, nightfall, and teeming waves allude to underlying fears and anxieties in and outside the home. Despite all this, the paintings appear enchanted, summoning the timeless narratives of fairy tale illustrations. Even with their morose symbols of death and darkness, unexpected undertones of humor and tenderness permeate her work – as Mark Twain wrote, “Comedy is tragedy plus time.”

Corrigan has long investigated the tension between satire and horror as well as the real and psychosomatic. Rather than being overcome by uncontrollable and unsettling forces, Corrigan’s figures seem to confront them actively, fumbling and flowing through challenging environments. The emotive weight and speed of their own becoming are magnified by Corrigan’s heavy build-up of oil paint and a smattering of brushstrokes, giving shape to unseen forces such as wind, sunshine, trepidation, and butterflies in the stomach.

Carl Jung reflexively named the things people repress and avoid as their “shadow self.” In “The Noise Upstairs,” a girl motions upstairs with her flashlight in search of a sound, while a devilish gargoyle lurks behind the shadows; in “Green Ghost“ a bumbling ghost approaches a girl from the dark corners of her room at night. Irrational and endearing in shape and stature, these are our inner demons brought to life. The noise upstairs comes from an imaginary creature, the tortuous sound of our own mind at work.

In other paintings, we are left with moments of calm, cocoons of joy spun from the inevitable throes of life: a human skeleton in repose, finally; a tomboy guzzling down a good glass of milk, a girl treating her beloved undead pet with dinner scraps as evening falls. These sensitive denizens exist outside the troubles of adulthood and time, and they remind us of the intense curiosity, courage, and empathy that hopefully burns on after youth.

Press

Artillery “PUBLISHER’S EYE: Jane Corrigan” by Alex Garner

Cultured “If You’re in Los Angeles for Frieze, Don’t Miss These 10 Gallery Exhibitions” by Paloma Baygual