German painter Nadine Y. Jeners creates bold compositions that simultaneously assert themselves — the words “made by me” often appear in their lower halves — and let viewers determine meaning. These visually arresting works evoke fusions of color field paintings and text-based conceptual art, the two-toned canvases divided horizontally with text in both sections. One is invariably tempted to draw meaning from the combinations of words like “luck” or “energy” and colors, which allow for endless interpretations. Jeners further teases our impulse to decipher these pairings with beautifully stylized typography.
Sometimes these font choices seem complimentary, for example in the case of “power” in large, wide capital letters, but elsewhere they remain enigmatically enticing, as with the word “hope” in elegant but delicate two-toned lowercase. The textural qualities of Jeners’ brushstrokes are exquisite, with subtle variations in density, light and layering playing out across the seemingly monochrome fields. Gently curving paint daubs turn into lively bursts of color. Words and hues interact playfully on her dynamic painted fields.