SAN FRANCISCO, CA (February 20, 2023) – Jessica Silverman is pleased to announce Jocelyn Hobbie: Beauties, the artist’s first solo show in San Francisco, from March 8 to April 20, 2024. The artist will present a series of new oil paintings on canvas and paper portraying introspective women whose bodies evaporate into floral and graphic designs.
Hobbie’s paintings reflect her command of art history, engaging the traditions of Art Nouveau and Ukiyo-e, for example, and her dialogue with artists such as William Morris, Gustav Klimt, Tamara Lempicka, and Kehinde Wile. Inventions of her imagination, Hobbie’s hyper-real depictions of women are painted without models. Her patterns are original, albeit inspired by a wide range of tiles, textiles, and other ornamental abstraction.
Hobbie’s paintings on canvas entangle her alluring figures within intricate, hypnotic arrangements of plant life and cultural geometries. In Peak Desire , a commanding female figure is seen amid a sea of richly rendered yellow tulips, blue plumeria, and multicolor dahlias. Black and red butterflies that flutter among the petals echo hues in the woman’s vest, oscillating between dimensional curves and flat textures. Slipping the portrait between billowing patterns, the contrast between foreground and background collapses. In her own world, the woman’s face projects a gaze that defines the artist’s visual vocabulary, extending her reach beyond the frame.
The exhibition also includes several oil-on-paper paintings. Unlike the dense layering of her canvases, these delicately executed works combine patterns on a flat plane. Like art quilts, they draw from the legacy of 1970s feminist art. Hobbie places her women into universes of complex harmony, contrasting stillness with movement, exertion with rest. Her dense patterns do not entrap her subjects; rather, the swirl of visual activity shields them from solitude.
ABOUT JOCELYN HOBBIE
Jocelyn Hobbie (b. 1968, Northampton, MA) has a BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design. She has enjoyed solo exhibitions at Fredericks & Freiser, New York; Jack Tilton Gallery, New York and GNYP Gallery, Berlin. Recent group exhibitions include Nassima Landau Foundation, Tel Aviv, Israel; Tick Tack, Antwerp; Eric Hussenot, Paris; Carl Kostyal, Stockholm; Phillips, Hong Kong; Rental Gallery, East Hampton; and Hall Art Foundation, Reading, VT. She is represented by Fredericks & Freiser, New York.
ABOUT JESSICA SILVERMAN
Jessica Silverman is an ambitious, international contemporary art gallery known for building artists’ careers and supporting art buyers keen on establishing relevant collections. Silverman founded her eponymous gallery in 2008. She has an MA in Curatorial Practice from San Francisco’s California College of the Arts and a BFA from Otis College in Los Angeles. Silverman sat on the San Francisco Arts Commission for nine years and is happy to consult on public art projects. The gallery represents artists who make museum-worthy art at all stages of their careers. Works by the gallery’s artists have been acquired by museums such as the Tate (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museum Ludwig (Cologne), Reina Sofia (Madrid), MoMA (New York), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Hirshhorn (Washington D.C.), Pérez Art Museum (Miami), MCA Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), X Museum (Beijing) as well as museums in the San Francisco Bay Area – Asian Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, de Young Museum, SFMOMA, Stanford’s Cantor Art Center, etc. Jessica Silverman shows regularly at Art Basel Miami Beach and intermittently at the Swiss, Parisian, and Hong Kong editions of Art Basel. The gallery also participates in the Frieze fairs (Los Angeles and Seoul), the Armory (New York), and FOG Design + Art (San Francisco), among others. The gallery is a member of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA).