Janet Werner on her paintings and practice, in conversation for Elephant with Jo Rosenthal
For decades, Janet Werner has built one of the most important painting practices in contemporary art. Her figures occupy the space between representation and invention drawing viewers into worlds of her creation that feel both familiar and elusive. Combining precision with ambiguity, Werner creates images that shy away from easy interpretation, showcasing how we consider identity, memory & desire.
Werner’s paintings are populated by characters who feel caught in moments of transformation with obscured environments; they shift between landscape and dreamscape. Throughout her career, Werner has expanded the possibilities of what figure painting can be while developing a unique visual language that is deeply personal and all her own.
On the occasion of her recent exhibition Landscape with Legs at Anat Ebgi Gallery, Werner reflects on her process and the emotional and imaginative forces that continue to shape her work.
Janet, how has your work changed since 2015?
I was working with the idea of fictional portraits then, I was working with the idea of fictional portraits then, using collage to splice together different body parts – usually the head from one source and the body from another — which resulted in a kind of distortion, as in exquisite corpses. There was a point where I decided—I don’t know when exactly—but I decided to show the seams of the collage in my paintings, to show where one image has been joined with another. And that’s why you see all these breaks in my work now. The splitting of the image brought about a change in how the paintings read; they’re less like traditional portraits. In this body of work, there are ruptures, contradictions, and misalignments in the paintings. It suggests an idea about time – a sense of before and after, or the idea of simultaneity where two things are happening at once.
You both distort images in different ways. Can you talk about what draws you to that?
Distortion, exaggeration, and misalignment are all ways that I play with the expression of the figures in the paintings and also a way of moving beyond the original source material. It can be abrupt or subtle but there is an element of surprise in the collage process, often an element of humor, disturbance and disorientation. It’s a little like slipping on a banana peel. Suddenly you’re in a different place and you don’t know how you got there. I like this not knowing. For me it opens up a space of possibility. There is a mystery in that gap where one thing disappears and another appears. Something unpredictable happens in the gap, something new.
Can you talk about the role of archival / found imagery within your work?
The source images I use are from fashion magazines, primarily, and there are also quite a lot of art historical references. I fell into the fashion imagery sort of by accident. It’s not something I grew up looking at or thinking about and, in fact, when I was younger it was something I was rather dismissive of because I saw it as problematic in terms of how women are objectified. But I had been painting portraits from imagination — invented characters –without reference to photos and I had exhausted what I knew how to do using that process. I was looking for another approach, and at that time, in the early 2000s, a multitude of magazine shops had suddenly opened up. I had moved to Montreal from the Canadian prairies and was browsing through these magazine shops and realized that the fashion magazines were a readily available archive of images of figures manifesting a variety of gestures, poses, gazes, clothing, shapes, color, tones — a whole range of visual features and characteristics that I could borrow and play with. I became fascinated by the complexity of what was going on in those images. It was a sort of revelation and a world of possibility for painting opened up for me through those pages. It was the gaze of the model activating the image, the sense of movement, the abstract patterns and shapes of the clothing, rather than the clothing itself interested me, the beauty of the images and the evocation of desire. It all tied together, the complexity of the psychological and emotional qualities of the images as well as their abstract qualities.
Do you feel like you’re revealing something about your subjects, or creating something new?
Definitely creating something new. These characters in the paintings are invested with subjectivity in a way that’s different from the original source. The models in fashion are usually generic, and the whole point is that they are empty in a certain way, ciphers for us to project onto. The painting process subjects them to a kind of transformation. There is the collage to begin with that starts with the idea of a rupture, and the painting process builds in a host of imperfections, through the layering of color, the drawing and redrawing of the image. I’m interested in how this process creates character and expression in the painting and how it actually creates the subject.
Talk about the title of your show…
I’ve incorporated landscapes into my works for this show more. The title of my exhibition with Anat Ebgi, Landscape with Legs, came from a title of a painting that I did for my last show, and it literally was a split image where there was a landscape on top and on the bottom are two sets of legs, so it’s almost like the legs are carrying the landscape. The landscape element is not entirely new to me, but I’m actively trying to situate the figure in relation to an environment, and thinking about how difficult it is to grasp the space of a landscape versus the simple figure ground relationship that I’m more familiar with, having worked with the invented portrait for so long. Here it’s like two kinds of space in one image. I think of the landscape space as being more at the level of the subconscious – ungraspable– and the other, the figure, is more immediate and familiar, like seeing ourselves and how we’re mirrored in others. There’s sort of a mysterious interaction between these zones, the knowable and the unknown. I like this idea of participation. You’re not an isolate, even though we often feel like we are.
Why are you interested in the mix of beauty and discomfort?
In terms of glamor and the grotesque, beauty and discomfort, yes, they often operate in dialogue in my work. I want the paintings to have depth, psychological and emotional depth. The fashion magazines are very seductive on one hand, but they are also superficial, repetitive and often empty seeming. The models are doll-like figures. They are anyone and no one. This allows me to project onto them and transform them. I try to invest them with real subjectivity, and psychological + emotional life, to fill them up, so to speak. It isn’t there in the original. Sometimes I find distortion and the grotesque helpful to give weight to the image and complicate the reading. When they are only glamorous they feel quite empty to me. There has to be an edge of some kind. Often it’s a humorous edge, and the grotesque can be part of that. Sometimes there’s a bit of violence in splitting the images. It introduces a rupture of some kind and opens up the narrative.
Do you think breaking an image apart helps you get closer to something real?
Yes, perhaps, because it builds in a question about what is real and what is happening in the painting — what the story is. I want the paintings to stimulate questions about how things fit together, who the figure is, what they want, and what they’re doing or thinking. It’s the open-ended nature of the narrative that interests me. I think the breaks and glitches in the paintings introduce some of these questions. The open-endedness and ambiguity feel more real than any single, unified answer or interpretation. In my case, because I’m working with already-made images, I’m trying to unmake them and to mess with them in order to open up questions about their meaning.
What do you think about the people in your work?
There is no specific narrative I have in mind about the characters in the work. People sometimes ask me what the story is behind the characters, and there isn’t one story or one interpretation. It’s true that the women often manifest defiance and vulnerability… they are imaginary characters but perhaps there is an element of self-portraiture in them as well. Maybe they are all a kind of self-portrait.
As the show approaches closure, how do you feel about this new body of work as it nears completion? What’s next for you?
I’m interested in how the landscapes in this show can act as counterpoints to the figures. They break the persistent appearance of this female figure that I’ve been working with for so many years and open up the narrative. The landscape offers a space of contemplation that is less graspable. It’s less familiar to me and I’m trying to find out what the possibilities are. At the moment the landscape is functioning for me like the unknown or the subconscious in the paintings. I’m eager to explore this idea more in future work.
Check out more of Janet Werner’s work
