Jenik is a painter in the tradition of such visual theorists as Gorky, Kandinsky, and Motherwell. Absorbing and processing a vast range of material, from ancient languages to modern painting movements, her works convey a sense of confidence over this broad spectrum of experience. Jenik's taste for the primeval is evidenced in her discovery of the original mark: "You don't care if you ruin a piece of paper: it's just a piece of paper. But recently I've been thinking that the real creativity is often on a piece of paper." This tenet of Modernism has become fundamental to Jenik's work.

Her often biomorphic shapes and lines, coupled with her bold use of color infuse her paintings with richly exotic symbolism in the style of Miro and Leger. Early on, she took a cue from Munch whose work inspired her to put her life story in visual form. Now, Jenik's work tells that story abstractly with a vibrancy and expression that move from the container of her picture into the viewer's psyche. Her work is a celebration of generous form and color.

Jenik has painted all her life. Her work reflects a personal love for invention and creating new relationships. The certainty of Jenik's marks shows conviction and beauty. The works are master-pieces of impulsiveness, as they are also impulsively moving.

******

“Jenik’s Exaltations” by D. F. Colman
Jenik’s sensitively painted works on paper seize you (somehow, gently) by the throat and they don’t let go. This sensitive art-making process isn’t so sweet and guileless any more. The work shakes rattle and roles as it sings sweet lullabies to the viewer. There is an unabashed passion, which makes itself evident in the artists’ latest body of work, reflecting a sonorous and deeply creative mind.

What we sense and feel in Jenik’s recent works are the cumulative energies of grand modern masters such as Sam Francis’ work of the late seventies, Miro’s elaborate overall works of the fifties, and the propulsive surges of Franz Kline, albeit softened with just the right touch of Jenik’s ever-present lyricism.
Playfulness and mystery infiltrate the artist’s paradoxes which allow us, as viewers, to access infinite spaces, and then voids within fullness. Often outsized loops and calligraphic-like segments careen and hover inside planes of brightly colored grounds. Emotionally expansive readings and psychologically dense inferences become plain to the eye through the rendering of form, color, and space.

Jenik’s gestural abstractions remind us of the philosopher Shelling’s comment that art was the resolution of an infinite contradiction in a finite object. How true this is of Jenik’s artwork. She has arrived at a point in her mastery where she creates works that are pictorially engaging on formal levels but also philosophically teasing and profound in imagery. The artist’s visionary exaltations refer to the enigmatic presence of lived life aware of itself and of its limitations, yet pressing on and filled with a sense of infinite possibilities. This vision is a fine legacy for us as viewers to bask in.

- D.F. Colman is an arts writer residing in Manhattan.

To Artist Showroom