10 Dec 2020

Jeanne Silverthorne: More Flesh and Bone

University of Kentucky Art Museum, Singletary Center for the Arts

Reviewed by Saul Ostrow

Like Philip Guston's paintings from the 1970s, Jeanne Silverthorne's art is concerned with surrogacy and identity. Yet her works remind me of Hitchcock's McGuffins - those innocuous, banal objects which stimulate suspicion and anticipation, but whose purpose is to lead us astray. Others make me think of David Lynch films. Her aesthetic like his is off-kilter. One need only to reflect on the inevitable destiny of the flies that infest the vitrine in Top of the World (2014).

As one unpacks her symbolism it shifts back and forth between analogy and metaphor. One discovers repeated inferences to decay and self-deprecation. These are encoded into her crates, painted with faux wood grain but functional, electrical fixtures, real but not functional, and abject objects which verge on the pathetic. Her images are imbued with a dark humor. For this reason, I can only think that her crates, serving as plinths and pedestals, are here as a reminder of the existential temporality of all things.