Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to announce Pattern of a Pattern, an exhibition of new mixed media works on paper by Jacquelyn Strycker. This will be her first solo exhibition with the gallery. A reception will be held on April 9th, 6-8pm.
Strycker’s practice explores the relationship between decoration and function, and the possibilities of material transformation through handicraft. She creates ornate collages that move between drawing, printmaking, and textile construction. Strycker begins by hand-drawing patterns and quilt squares. Using a risograph duplicator, she prints scans of her drawings on fabric and fiber-based papers. The risographs are then cut, collaged, folded, and sewn together in a process the artist likens to quilting. Strycker notes that the choice to use an outdated office machine makes her process “absurdly inefficient, and that inefficiency is part of the point.”
Strycker’s visual language references functional textiles like quilts, rugs and tapestries; however, their materiality resists function. The constructions she forms range from two-dimensional to sculptural. They are decorative, yet demand the same labor-intensive processes as the functional forms that inspire them, emphasizing the tension between utility and ornament. She finds humor in the “stubbornness of labor-intensive work.” The accumulation of incidental marks – misaligned registrations, vestiges of a fold, haphazard stitches – becomes evidence of the involved process. A multitude of patterns becomes the predominant motif, building repetition across the surface and emphasizing the act of making and re-making. In the artist’s own words, “A pattern of a pattern is not a lesser thing. It is its own record of having been made, and made again.”
Jacquelyn Strycker is a Brooklyn-based artist working in printmaking, collage, and fiber-based media. She holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art. She has recently participated in exhibitions at Print Center New York; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ; Positive Space, Tulsa, OK; Tyger Tyger Gallery, Asheville, NC; and Collar Works, Troy, NY. Her work is in both public and private collections including the New York Public Library and Memorial Sloan Kettering. Strycker has participated in residencies at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), the Institute for Electronic Arts, Alfred, Women's Studio Workshop, and Vermont Studio Center. In 2023 she was a member of the inaugural cohort of Print Center New York's New Voices program. Strycker is on the faculty at Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts, and is a co-director of Peep Space in Tarrytown, NY.
