Pictured: Jane Hammond: Tattooed Man, 2017, acrylic paint on mica over plexiglass with silver, gold, copper, and palladium leaf, 44¼ by 31 by 3¾ inches. Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York.
Jane Hammond’s “Dazzle Paintings,” on view in her exhibition “Search Light” at Lelong, seem to draw on the history of film and photography as much as they do the history of painting. The works shimmer and appear to move as light catches aspects of the mica and other reflective materials on which they are painted. An image of a smiling bare-chested man, with striking Americana-themed tattoos on his chest and arms, has a personal and nostalgic air, though it is based on one of the found snapshots the artist is known to collect. The works suggest a cauldron of contradictions—appearing both handmade and high-tech, vintage and futuristic.
A side gallery is given over to new digitally composed photomontages that combine imagery from found photographs and shots taken by the artist. The works present surreal scenarios that have a cinematic suggestiveness. In The 55 Club (2017), for instance, a ragtag group of children, bearing guns or rudimentary tools and wearing bandages, gathers around an old plane that appears to have crashed in the middle of a desolate field. —Lindsay Pollock
Pictured: Jane Hammond: Tattooed Man, 2017, acrylic paint on mica over plexiglass with silver, gold, copper, and palladium leaf, 44¼ by 31 by 3¾ inches. Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York.