The Armory Show 2025: Jacqueline Surdell
Upcoming exhibition
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SECRIST | BEACH is pleased to announce our solo presentation of Chicago-based artist Jacqueline Surdell in the Galleries Section, Booth 215, of the 2025 Armory Show. On view will be a suite of wall-based fiber works created through knotted textile forms. This presentation precedes her debut solo exhibition at SECRIST | BEACH opening September 19.On large-scale looms, Jacqueline Surdell employs the full force of her body, weaving sculptural topographies that physically and metaphorically investigate material, space, and time. Her woven reliefs - composed of twisted, bound, and tightly or loosely wefted ropes and shipping lines - pay homage to painterly traditions of depth and perspective while simultaneously exposing the illusionistic nature of the picture plane.Drawing from religious imagery, pastoral landscapes, and forest surveys, Surdell constructs a narrative of grief and joy, violence and tenderness, play and survival - all in flux. Throughout the weavings are images of historically relevant images printed on sheets of fabric, cut into strips and woven into the artworks. These include Jan van Eyck's Adam and Eve from the Ghent Altarpiece and painting renditions of The Conversion of Saul by the artists Guido Reni, Jérôme Cartellier, and Luca Giordano. Each artwork represents a complex moment representing both exile and of vision, where the sacred and the haunted coexist.Surdell’s monumental wall sculpture, Suddenly, she was hell-bent and ravenous (after Giotto), will make its debut at this year’s edition of The Armory Show. This artwork was built in situ over the course of 3 months during the gallery’s 2024 summer survey exhibition titled Making Time. This artwork marks a new point of exploration within Surdell’s practice which examines the sublimity of religious imagery, drawing source material from Giotto’s 14th century fresco of The Last Judgement in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy.
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Jacqueline Surdell
Suddenly, she was hell-bent and ravenous (after Giotto), 2024Nylon cord, steel, polyester fabric, steel spool top, steel chain and meat hooks
165 (body) x 252 (pole to pole) x 7 inches
