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Description

Jessica Vaughn’s practice as an artist is grounded in the struggles that arise from the use of different materials. Knowing that there is not a predetermined end to what she can do to materials, she manipulates them, not to just make the materials her own but to subvert the conventional use or ownership of the material. She furthers the discussion of representation by using printmaking to explore the boundaries between two and three-dimensional work. Vaughn combines silkscreen, lithography, and digital printing with unconventional materials, such as carborundum, to bring to life images that are often times hidden, and culturally and politically ambiguous. In both her prints and paintings she places together materials and images that don’t conventionally belong to further push the conceptual aspects of her work. Carborundum, a material used to erase an image, Vaughn uses to build images. She also employs garbage bags and tar to provide visual tension and uncertainty. Her methods support her investigations of questionable realities, while creating a dialogue between material and image.

In her current exhibition “Toppled” Jessica Vaughn explores historical and cultural issues through the athletic performance of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. The 1936 Olympics were meant to support political myth in the promotion of a German state and the cultural myth of the inferiority of black citizens; however, with the unlikely outcomes of the athlete’s performances, these myths were challenged. In appropriating the iconic image of Jesse Owens from Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 film “Olympia” as well as archival still images from the Games, Vaughn critiques the sporting event as a heightened connection between euphoria and spectacle, between the body and a public space. On her prints she collages additional representations and layers of carborundum so that Owens’ initial image becomes more complicated and more of a metaphor for this political moment. A former competitive athlete herself, Vaughn witnessed the emotion spectators had for an individual within a performative moment. She uses these experiences to challenge conventional representations of public spaces, and minority bodies through material choices.

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