CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/7/2024

Vibrating with animate intensity, 'JJ Manford' is NEW from Derek Eller & Harper's!

“Texas Desert Interior with Noguchi Lantern” (2023) is from JJ Manford’s eponymous new (and first) monograph—a featured title at our December pop-up at dapper Brooklyn home emporium The Primary Essentials. Essayist Gilles Heno-Coe notes the way that Manford’s enigmatic interior tableaux “vibrate with animate intensity despite the characteristic absence of life, save for an occasional potted plant or loafing tabby cat.” The work inhabits a liminal space, “somewhere between invention and appropriation, painting and drawing, experimentation and design, inside and outside. … These are not paintings about life, per se, but they demonstrate that longing of wanting to give life to something. But that has long been the domain of artists—to bring inanimate matter to life. Manford succeeds in that regard, if only to remind us that sometimes even the most banal parts of life can still be both wonderful and strange.” Please join us for a book signing with Manford Sunday afternoon!