This review is an experiment. Patricia Sweeten Gallery is in Los Angeles and I am in Chicago. At my request, the gallery has sent me high-resolution images of the works in Harris’s show, and I will be basing my review on those images. Today, most of us only see artwork on our laptop or smart phone in small, (often) low-resolution images. So, it is time that we owned up to the fact that more and more often our perception of an artist’s work is not from the original but from photographic/electronic reproductions. Walter Benjamin addressed the aesthetic issues regarding copies versus originals in his famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, originally written in 1935. For Benjamin, the issue of the loss of the original, as traditionally defined, centered on the development of lithography and, later, photography and (especially) film, where there was no original. He pondered on how this change affected our aesthetic notion of a work and how it affected the marketing of art. We are faced with similar issues with the development of computer technology. So, facing those issues, I have specified that the images be presented as large as possible. Using them, will try to draft a cogent review of Jen P. Harris’s work, acknowledging the limitations that viewing only electronic versions of their work impose.

The nontraditional employment of fiber in works of art caught my attention at last year’s Expo Chicago. Kandy Lopez used fiber as paint strokes on massive “canvases of mesh;” Nathan Vincent knitted a life-sized locker room; John Paul Morabito wove beaded threads into large abstractions. The artist in this review, Jen P. Harris, combines a painted canvas with a woven layer over it. The vertical warp threads of the woven layer are separated with enough space to see the painting below, and the horizontal weft threads, likewise, do not occupy all the space; in fact, they usually occupy only a fraction of the area of the work. Therefore, the underpainting shows through, and each layer contributes to the formal composition.

        What makes Harris’s pieces so remarkable are two things: the interplay between the forms in the paintings and the forms in the weaving and Harris’s remarkable color sense-—controlling bright, saturated colors without getting garish. Purely visually, the pieces are beautiful abstractions—until you look closer. Agora, shown below, is a perfect example of the fusion of layers. When you stand back away from the image of the piece, you see that Agora is actually a bust portrait—the woven weft outlines the forehead and cheekbone around the eyes while the underpainting defines the rest of the cheek and jaw, and a variety of variously colored warp threads and tightly woven segments define the upper torso.

        This oscillation between warp, weft, and background painting to create a final image is an integral part of Harris’s style and can be read as a metaphor for “coming out” or expressing the status of being gender queer or nonbinary. Let us examine how that works in Feeling of Fury. On close inspection, this work appears to depict an act of fellatio. In the center, a female-like form, defined by an area of red warp that is constrained by shapes woven in pale blue, is rising out of a water-like area. Along with the arms of the figure rendered in the painted layer, descending male genitalia are painted in the background layer as they morph to become part of the face of the figure. The rest of the male figure is not depicted in the piece. The work is not prurient, rather, it is vaguely religious, hinting at the Moses myth. The uncertainty of what is transpiring, for me, reinforces the impression that this painting is about sexual identity.

        The title piece, Tomboy, is interesting in that a smiling cartoon-style bust of a figure floating in a pink bubble is entirely depicted in the background painted layer. The warp acts like a curtain covering the figure that is about to emerge through a central divide in the warp. There are a number of fully woven areas that seem to float, as if fish in a bowl. Two are especially prominent in the center of the work, a form that appears in many of Harris’s pieces. A small bust of a figure appears at the bottom of the composition, its head split by the divide in the warp—a chrysalis from which the pink face has emerged? Is this a metaphor for a dual identity—the real person being behind the screen of the warp?

        Correlation offers a different perspective on Harris’s work as it is significantly smaller than the other works at only 18 x 14 inches, instead of the 44 x 36-inch dimensions of the other pieces. The warp threads are more colorfully dominant and individually significant while the fully woven segments are more prominent. This work suggests a torso in the background with dark blue and bright yellow painted segments on the left. Again, it is a depiction of an incomplete individual. This is a theme that permeates this show and hints metaphorically at the complexity of coming to terms with one’s sexuality.

        As socially political as this work is, it is enhanced by its uncompromising beauty. This attribute is what attracted me to write about the show. So many works by artists that focus on the LGBTQI experience are drenched in anger and negativity (and rightly so). Harris manages to find a transcendent way to address this critical social issue. They share this approach with Antonius Tin-Bui, the Vietnamese American artist who works with cut paper and shows at Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago. Like appreciation for the best of religious art from the past as art and not just religious propaganda, we may have finally entered a time where the queer experience can be depicted and celebrated in all its beauty with joy and without apology.

Michel Ségard is the Editor in Chief of the New Art Examiner and a former adjunct assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been a published art critic for more than 45 years and is also the author of numerous exhibition catalog essays.