Artist Profile
Jamey Hart
Jamey Hart (b.1992, Erie, PA) is an artist currently living and working outside of Boston, MA. His practice focuses on casting everyday experiences into the shadow of discrete objects. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Cleveland Institute of Art in 2014 and his Masters in Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Houston in 2021. His work has been included in publications such as New American Paintings, Reciprocal Magazine, ArtMaze Magazine, and Lula Japan. Selected solo exhibitions include “Mere” at Gray Contemporary in Houston, TX, “And” at Automat Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, and “Slow Pace Time” at Front Gallery in Houston, TX. His practice has earned institutional support and recognition from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Houston Arts Alliance, The Hopper Prize, Vermont Studio Center, and Fieldworks Marfa.
Available Works
CV
EDUCATION:
2021 MFA Painting, University of Houston, Houston, TX
2014 BFA Painting, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2022 Four, Axel Projects, Melbourne, AU (forthcoming)
2021 Mere, Gray Contemporary, Houston, TX
2021 Placeholder, Elgin Street Gallery, Houston, TX
2019 Pistachio, Gray Contemporary, Houston, TX
2018 And, Automat Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2018 Slow Pace Time, Front Gallery, Houston, TX
2017 What’s Now From Then, Frame 301 Gallery, Beverly, MA
2015 Enough Dumb Courage, Popeye Gallery, Cleveland, OH
2014 And I Slip On the Shimmer Littered From Boom, CIA, Cleveland, OH
GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2021 Untitled: Theresa Anderson, Jonathan Cowan, Jamey Hart, Aimée Terburg, & Nathalie Thibault, Gray Contemporary, Houston, TX
2021 42nd Masters of Fine Arts Exhibition, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, TX
2020 Admirational Invitational, Studio E Gallery, Seattle, WA
2019 A Mirror For You, Area Gallery, Boston, MA
2019 Summer Show, Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, Houston, TX
2018 Somewhere Between, Gallery W, Westlake, OH
2018 Backroom Forward, Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY
2018 Layered, Gallery Also, Los Angeles CA
2018 Whatever It Is I Have Looked For, Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY
2018 Group Exhibition: Second Gallery, Gray Contemporary, Houston, TX
2018 Alumni Show, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
2017 Summer Whites, Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY
2017 In White, Gallery of Designers, Warsaw, POL
2017 Wool Over Our Eyes, Washington Reid Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2017 Gala, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA
2017 Finders Keepers, 222 Cabot, Beverly MA
2017 Sneak Peek No Show III, Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY
2017 Sneak Peek No Show I, Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY
2017 Free Style, Zygote Press, Cleveland, OH
2016 Pre-ception, Automat Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2016 Shim Invitational 3, Shim Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2016 Appropriation and Such, 337 Project Space, Grand Rapids, MI
2016 Shiner, Fourth Wall Gallery, Oakland, CA
2016 New American Paintings: Midwest 119, Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL
2015 Blah Blah Blah: Ben Weathers + Jamey Hart, Forum Artspace, Cleveland, OH
2015 Mimeo Revolution, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH
2014 Process and Materiality, Beachwood Arts Council, Beachwood, OH
2014 Best Of, Union Club, Cleveland, OH
2014 Five, Forum Gallery, Cleveland, OH
2014 Happy Looking, Art Spot, Cleveland Heights, OH
2014 Summer Show, Reinberger Gallery, Cleveland, OH
2014 Rites of Passage, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
2014 Divide, Dredge, and Difference, Reinberger Gallery, Cleveland, OH
2013 NaNa13, Lucky Street Gallery, Key West, FL
2013 Small Works, Brunswick Street Gallery, Fitzroy, VIC, AUS
2013 Member Show, Arts Collinwood, Cleveland, OH
2012 Abstraction, Evansville Museum of Arts, Science, and History, Evansville, IN
GRANTS/FELLOWSHIPS/AWARDS:
2021 Bridge Fund, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York, NY
2020 New Project Fund, University of Houston, Houston, TX
2020 Artist Relief Grant, Houston Arts Alliance, Houston TX
2019 Provost Fellowship, University of Houston, Houston, TX
2019 Painting Scholarship, University of Houston, Houston, TX
2019 Artist Grant, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT
2019 Travel Grant, University of Houston, Houston, TX
2018-2021 Graduate Fellowship, University of Houston, Houston, TX
2010-2014 Provost Scholarship, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
2010-2014 Cleveland Institute of Art Grant, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
2010-2014 Otto F. Ege Memorial Prize, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
2014 Prizm Sponsorship Award, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
2013 Frances Wise + H.Jack Lang Scholarship, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
2012 Carl Gaertner ’24 Memorial Prize, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
2012 Honorary Scholarship, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
2011 Joseph C. + Louis J. Motto Scholarship, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
2011 Honorary Scholarship, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
2011 Sue Wall Painting Award, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
2021 Bradley, Taylor: "Three in Houston", Sightlines Mag, 11 June 2021
2019 Tennant, Donna: “Pistachio: Gray Contemporary”, Visual Art Source, 9 March 2019
2018 Simonski, Rachel: “Interview, Jamey Hart”, Reciprocal Art Mag, 1 August 2018
2017 Mothes, Kate: “Interview, Jamey Hart”, Youngspace, 23 June 2017
PUBLICATIONS:
2019 ArtMaze Magazine, Issue #10
2018 Reciprocal Magazine, Interview, Issue #2
2018 ArtMaze Magazine, Issue #6
2017 Lula Japan Magazine, Interview, Issue #7
2015 New American Paintings, Issue #119
RESIDENCIES:
2020 Dust Artist Residency, Fieldworks, Marfa, TX (cancelled)
2019 Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT
CURATORIAL:
2018 Whatever It Is I Have Looked For, Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY, Curated with Ben Weathers
2012 Blunderbuss, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH, Curated with Ben Weathers
Artist Statement
I give extended attention to materials and situations that are veiled by their commonness and acute specificity. I am guided by a quasi-magical / quasi-analytical belief that these fragments are somehow keystones to broader structures that I don't know how to understand. Legibility is the degree of ease that experiences, signs, and symbols convey meaning based on their appearance. The capacity for something to communicate hinges on its visibility, though a visible object is not necessarily a legible one. In both looking and making, I am searching for a form that can disclose this ambiguous space. Somehow, I always arrive back to objects. And objects always lead me back into painting.
1.
What is painting? Where does it happen? What is an object? Where does it happen? When does the poetic happen? Does it ever? Does completeness come from an object's capacity to internalize its whole process of gestation, swallowing it, making the external interior, and safe from sight? Or does it come from an object's ability to extinguish its story through some mysterious process of transformation? Can an object ever be merely itself if its appearance is always influenced by a context? I know that there is something consequential in an object that tries to contain the thing that contains it.
2.
I make objects that distill an experience that I have of the world, after it has already taken form in words. Making the object is a means of witnessing the translation of that experience from language into something wordless. The bridge between those two kinds of articulation serves as something like a center.
3.
Today I saw a red sock in the street. I noticed the sock because of its color, its shape, and the certainty of its edges. It was an anomalous thing, not transcendental or spectacular, but noticeable against the middle gray of the street. Because of this, it seemed to separate itself from the environment. It seemed very fixed and finite at a distance. But given more time, it expands outward and implies a complex relationship with its surroundings. There is some reason that it is there, in the street, at that time. Maybe not a reason, but somehow, it arrived. And I can only speculate on the origin of that object, on the situation that caused that thing to show up and become apparent.
4.
Measuring and marking time, in an attempt to hold experience, to isolate a visual world, formalizes the un-formal. Just because something isn’t revealed visually, doesn’t mean it is not there. Just because something is articulated verbally, doesn’t mean it now exists. Quitting all that seems voluntary seems to reveal the contours of what is involuntary. Continue to fold the leather until all the air is gone. Pack the snowball until it is ice. If seeing is a form of knowing, objects only allow access for our looking. They are events with the potential to change direction that we can only ever experience a fragment of. In the failures of communication, there is a space of looking that is opened in which the given logic and structure of the world become less of a given. In this space, even momentarily, our modes of attention have the potential to be ruptured and arranged differently.