Trotter&Sholer is pleased to present Recall a two-person exhibition with Jessica Frances Grégoire Lancaster and Pajtim Osmanaj. Recall presents an exploration of unsettled memory through paintings based on photographs. Memories are notoriously unreliable, yet they are the very fabric of the narrative self. In this exhibition, both artists are exploring events captured in photographs.
These photographs are used as source material, spliced and reconfigured to constructmoments of time both fragmented and imagined. Using oil paint, these artists play with the idea of rememberingand the act of making memories.
Lancaster has a collection of vernacular photos, mostly of strangers, for images that capture an instant in time, a fragment of a story. She is drawn to images that evoke a sense of familiarity; perhaps an image of a vintage car, or a shirt with embroidery reminiscent of her grandmother. Occasionally words scrawled on the back of photos will draw her to them. These images become stand-ins for her own memories. She splices and reconfigures the pictures, sometimes multiple images taken moments apart, and tells an intersecting story, beginning with specifics. Lancaster paints in reverse on glass, she begins with precision details and fills in the broader paint strokes behind building up the work from the back.
Osmanaj’s paintings begin as traditional oil paintings made from family photographswhich he sometimes reconfigures, revising the memories they captured.For instance, Osmanaj has cut out an image of himself posing with his siblings and mother during their time as refugees and placed them back in the front yard of their family home. He is able to reassemble his memories through the use of location. Upon the completion ofthe painting, Osmanaj layers in his signature airbrushing technique, somewhat obscuring his careful brushstrokes. This treatment of the work highlights the dreamlike quality of memory and allows for Osmanajto intercede into his past.
Both Lancaster and Osmanaj are actively inserting themselves into the process of memorymaking, destabilizing ideas of fact and permanence, replacing them with notions of familiarity and genesis.
Recall will be on view at 168 Suffolk Street from September 7th to October 12th, 2023
