EXHIBITION REVIEW: JESSICA EATON: TIME ON A BOTTLE
Jessica Eaton, Natura Morta (Luce Danzante) 34, 2022, pigment print, 32 x 40 inches, courtesy Higher Pictures Generation
Written by Megan May Walsh
Edited by Jana Massoud
Photographer Jessica Eaton showcases her sunset and pastel soaked exhibition Time on Bottle with Higher Pictures Generation. Her fifth solo exhibition with the gallery takes the viewer on a visual journey of colorful experiments with bottles.
Jessica Eaton received her BFA in photography from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. She is known for her simple photographic subjects radiating with vibrant color as seen in her other exhibitions, Higher Pictures Generation: Cubes for Albers and Lewitt (2011), Custom Color (2015), Pictures for Women (2017), and Iterations (2019). Her exhibition Time on A Bottle takes on a slightly different color experimentation with her typical aesthetic.
Jessica Eaton, LD v.34, 2022, pigment print, 14x11 inches, courtesy Higher Pictures Generation
With over 10 years of interrogating the additive theory of color in photography, Eaton devised a new wonderfully colorful system of painting with light that she encapsulated with the bottle. This experimentation was forced out of Eaton when the height of the pandemic hit and she was locked away from all the creative pieces needed to produce her intensive projects like that of the Cubes for Albers and LeWitt photographs. Similar to many individuals, creative and otherwise, struggling to grapple with the isolation of social distancing during the early months of the pandemic, "the bottle" became a passageway for escapism - and for Eaton, a creative inspiration. The early months of the pandemic brought a radical new paradigm of time. All of a sudden, the hustle and bustle of everyday life was silenced. It was a task within itself to discover ways to pass the time. Simple things like baking bread, watching the news, drinking wine, and chatting on Zoom became highlights of an entire day, perhaps even an entire week. For Jessica Eaton, this new paradigm of time found itself in the bottle.
By photographing glass bottles on a mirror and white backdrop, Eaton builds a "dancing light" through additive mixing of various colored light sources. The translucent bottles diffuse the light like stained glass constructing layers of color that resemble variations of pastel soaked sunsets. Eaton formulates a typology of color theory, creating photographs that depict the bottles filled to the brim with liquid light and glowing with color.
The bottles in the photographs are enticing. They present themselves as the epitome of escapism, as a magical elixir or dreamy potion promising to transport your mind and body to another world dipped in wonder and teeming with possibility. Idle thoughts wandering through the mind space of navigating unemployment, rising death counts, the fear of losing loved ones, and later the breakout of massive civil unrest, a sunset-kissed glowing elixir promising a liquid light amidst the darkness was a fantasy we all craved.
Installation view by Nicholas Knight, courtesy Higher Pictures Generation
Jessica Eaton's exhibition Time On A Bottle will be on view at Higher Pictures Generation from May 7th to June 25th, 2022. For more information on the exhibition and the artist, please visit here.
