Two Places at Once
New York | October 25 – December 21, 2024
Los Angeles | November 9 – December 21, 2024
Sargent’s Daughters is pleased to present Two Places at Once, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Charis Ammon. The aptly titled presentation will span across our Los Angeles gallery and New York viewing room for a dual venue exhibition.
Two Places at Once presents Ammon’s tactile paintings of places the artist has encountered as a pedestrian and a passenger across New York and her native Texas. Many of the paintings depict views obstructed by the play of light, such as the drizzle of rain on the windshield of a moving car, the surface of a pool, or the undulating glare of sunlight on a vinyl sheet enclosing a produce stand. These translucent surfaces split the picture plane into extreme foreground and background and highlight the illusory surface of the painting, which itself operates as a window for viewers to peer through.
Ammon describes her work as encounters with the unexpected in the everyday, moments which allow her to step outside of herself and her routines. Her paintings evoke the affective experience of inhabiting a particular place, transporting their viewers into spaces of reflection. Ammon says, “You are in the physical space you occupy, hearing the sounds around you—yet you are in another world built in your mind. Whispers of life emerge from the surfaces and cityscapes around me that bend my attention back toward observation. These small moments weave my inner and outer worlds together.” The paintings in this exhibition dwell in the tension between memory and being. Ammon’s precise yet painterly works conjure the friction between these spaces, allowing viewers the pleasure of inhabiting both of them at once.
