The Muses of Artist JJ Manford Take Center Stage in ‘Fifth Season'

American artist JJ Manford is showcasing a new solo exhibition of paintings at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen. Based in Brooklyn, Manford is known for creating vibrant interior spaces using oil stick on canvas that radiate with a textured dreamlike effect depicting his interests across travel, architecture, midcentury furniture and art history.

In Fifth Season, Manford presents 13 new paintings riddled with references to the many art and design heroes that inspire his practice. From graphic compositions by Keith Haring, Poul Henningsen’s PH5 hanging lamp to sculptures by Asger Jorn and Alexander Calder, each composition offers juxtapositions between a range of objects, spaces and ideas.

While his paintings might appear informed by real life settings or photographs, Manford intuitively builds each interior scene, allowing his unconscious to dictate the flow of each work. “Hardly any of my paintings are literal depictions of personal memories, or places I have been or thought about,” Manford previously said in an interview, “however all of these things seep into my unconscious and rise to the level of my awareness, to varying degrees. Along those lines, I tend to shy away from prescriptive imagery, and trust where my compositional and painterly impulses take me.”

The exhibition’s title is inspired by a poem by Lebanese-American essayist Etel Adnan, who wrote: “They tell me there are four seasons but I live in a fifth one which is your space and your time”. Fifth Season is on view in Copenhagen until September 28, 2024.

V1 Gallery
Slagtehusgade 44, D,
1715 København, Denmark