For Lansgage, Jack Mernin prepared an intimate collection of abstractions—one large abstract painting, a set of accompanying watercolors, and an editioned, handwritten zine each covered with a one-of-a-kind painted canvas sleeve cut from the artist's old abstract paintings.

The exhibition displays three methodologies integral to Jack’s practice. Condensing seen, direct studies on paper; atmospheric forms which coalesce onto a human-scaled painting; and reflective, word-based operations, behaving much like Jack’s imagery—as pared form selected for the sake of imaginative expansion. The associative correlations that arise between image and word, sensuousness and cognition, fluctuate with each beholder and at every successive viewing experience.

Jack wishes to carve a considered position that encourages other encounters during separate, unpredictable times. Establishing a moment that is morphed through the act of looking, his paintings are bound to a playfully serious game of possession and retention, catch and release. The risk enacted is thus visualized as an indecisive state where sentences remain in flux.

Lansgage was the term invented by Marcel Proust and Reynaldo Hahn to describe their coded language used in their personal correspondence.

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Jack Mernin (b. 1991) is an American contemporary visual artist who divides his time between Manila, Philippines, New York and Belleville, USA. His body of work consists of gestural abstractions forming vibrant atmospheric forms pulsating with energy often rendered on textured paper or large-scale canvases. He holds a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design.