Jerry Allen
Curated by: Reid Shier
Jerry Allen has produced a large body of work, rarely exhibited in galleries, in which he paints or draws large, monochromatic and typographically distinct numbers onto the walls of architectural spaces. Allen is never specific of the number’s meaning, with the intention of inviting a viewer’s own associative references to the work. The ambiguity, however, works in contrast to the dominant, floor to ceiling imposition of the patterns that Allen painted in the Or’s large front exhibition space. Through this investigation, Allen suggests that numbers are perhaps one of the most trans-culturally familiar signifiers, and that any meaning they have must be an entirely subjective experience.