Spring/Summer/ Autumn/Winter Collection
Jan Nelson’s works often mesh design with emotional content. The abstract striped paintings juxtaposed with the invented portraits are a direct response to the high design world of advertising, architecture and fashion. They are shiny and pure, executed in sign writer’s enamel: handmade to look manufactured. Where the small portraits are loaded with content, these works are contentless. They rely on a cerebral response to colour, vibrate with intensity and are named in response to this season’s colours: Summer, Winter, Spring and Autumn collection.
The handmade element is important in Nelson’s work, a touch of human imperfection. While aiming for precision, she ultimately fails to achieve perfection. The works are obsessive in their manufacture, trying to replicate that which is already mechanically reproducible and expressing the anxiety we all feel about losing control. This is perhaps a struggle that is doomed to fail but, in the process, something unique is created, with a life of its own.