Hypnic Jerk marks J. Parker Valentine’s third solo exhibition with the gallery; the installation, consisting of two large-scale works on canvas, each executed in the media of ink, graphite, pastel, water soluble colored pencil and mud dye, stands as an elaboration on a development in Valentine’s practice that began in 2022 – the production of discrete works on stretched canvas. Ever the experimentalist, what was first articulated in the form of a single monumental wall-mounted work, presented at the June Art Fair (Basel) , arguably, a painting, albeit one that amounts to a conglomeration of past processes, laid out on a single plane, with the final orientation clear but unfixed, has since transgressed this classicism of presentation and become, as well, a form of site-specific architectural intervention. This rapid architectural evolution was first evident in Valentine’s subsequent 2022 exhibition Eccentric Cache (Galerie Max Mayer, Duesseldorf) and continues, in the present exhibition, with an extra emphasis on the perspective of the body. Evident in a consideration of these developments in Valentine’s practice is an interplay between the narrative space of the work and the drama of the viewer’s relationship to this scape –  both visually and in a more pronounced social and physical proximity. Consistent within the artist’s practice is an embrace of a contradictory – if not impossible – physics and the high degree of generosity implied by an invitation; this and the generative nature of the discomfort that accompanies a speculative practice.

Valentine’s upcoming and recent solo and group exhibitions include : a two-person exhibition with Ben Sakoguchi (forthcoming at Bel Ami, Los Angeles, 2024); Francis Irv (forthcoming, September, 2024);  Models, Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2024);  Natural Function, Spiral Garden, Tokyo (2022); To Lean Into, Ceysson & Benetiere, New York (2022) and Eccentric Cache, Galerie Max Mayer, Dusseldorf (2022).