Esteban Jefferson

Petit Palais

November 14, 2019–January 11, 2020
The painting Billeterie, 2019, installed on a wall in the gallery’s foyer. A sculptural bust of a Black man displayed on a pedestal behind a visitors service desk. To the right, a Black man in a suit leans against the desk. The bust and the man’s face are rendered realistically, while the rest of the scene consists of soft washes of sienna and blue.

Esteban Jefferson, installation view, 2019-2020.

Two large paintings installed on adjacent walls. Entrée, 2019 on the left wall is significantly larger than Gratuite, 2019 installed to the right.

Esteban Jefferson, installation view, 2019-2020.

Three paintings installed on white walls. Entrée, 2019 is installed on the left wall, while Collections Permanentes, 2019 is on the right and Gratuite, 2019 at the back.

Esteban Jefferson, installation view, 2019-2020.

Collections Permanentes, 2019, mounted on a white wall. A vaguely rendered scene. A visitor speaks to a museum attendant, who sits behind a visitors services desk. Above them, a sign obscures a sculptural bust of a Black man. The visible portion of the bust is meticulously and realistically rendered.

Esteban Jefferson, installation view, 2019-2020.

Two very large paintings installed on opposite facing white walls to the right and left. In the center, two monitors placed on the floor play Petit Palais, 2019.

Esteban Jefferson, installation view, 2019-2020.

Petit Palais, 2019, playing on two stacked CRT monitors. The top monitor displays a blurry video of a hall lined with marble statues. The bottom displays the Petit Palais museum logo.

Esteban Jefferson, installation view, 2019-2020.

A sculptural bust of a Black woman wearing a head wrap, displayed on a pedestal near the visitor service desk of a museum where a white attendant sits behind a computer. The scene, save for the bust and the attendant’s head, is rendered in vague washes of color and faint sketches.

Esteban Jefferson

Gratuite, 2019.

Oil on linen

42 × 60 in.

A museum lobby scene, rendered vaguely in light washes of color with a sculptural bust of a Black woman wearing a head wrap displayed on a pedestal at the center. The bust is rendered in full detail.

Esteban Jefferson

Entrée, 2019.

Oil on linen

76 × 120 in.

Press Release

White Columns is pleased to announce ‘Petit Palais’ the debut solo exhibition by the New York-based artist Esteban Jefferson.

Jefferson’s exhibition, presented as a mise-en-scene staged on a faux marble floor, comprises four recent paintings and a two-channel video work. The exhibition centers around Jefferson’s ongoing consideration of the Beaux Arts-style rotunda of the Petit Palais museum in Paris.

Working from his own photographic sources and video footage – shot during repeated visits to the museum – Jefferson has created a complex body of work centered around issues of race, identity and the legacies of colonialism, whilst simultaneously interrogating the methodologies of display and the institutional narratives within the museum itself.

Jefferson’s paintings describe the liminal space of the museum’s lobby with all of its institutional ‘clutter’: video screens, computer terminals, reception desks, public signage, and visitor stanchions. His paintings focus upon and privilege the serendipitous visual ‘encounters’ between the museum’s employees and visitors and two sculptural busts of African subjects that are on permanent display at the margins of the rotunda. (The museum’s wall labels for the busts identify neither their maker nor their date of creation, suggesting only a generic title ‘Buste d’Africaine’ and that they are possibly from the late 19th Century.)

Formally Jefferson’s paintings oscillate between areas of provisional mark-making and areas of intense, almost hyper-realistic focus. The process of their making remains fully evident. This aesthetic ‘push-pull’, a sense of being simultaneously in- and out-of-focus is echoed and amplified in the hand-held, ambient documentary video footage Jefferson presents alongside the paintings. About ‘Petit Palais’ Jefferson has stated that one of his intentions is:

“ … to open up a dialogue with the museum, to rethink the way the busts are presented, moving them into a more central space, with updated and more fully-researched labels … As it is now, the busts occupy the position they always have: kind of art, kind of decor, valuable but not treated as having the same value as everything else in the museum. The irony to me is that the busts are, in my opinion, the most interesting works on display in the Petit Palais.”

Working both within and around the established histories of painting Jefferson has embarked on a highly ambitious and rigorous project, one that simultaneously explores and expands the limits of the medium, in turn creating a truly idiosyncratic and aestheticized form of institutional critique.

Esteban Jefferson (b. 1989) received his MFA in 2019 and his BA in 2011, both from Columbia University, New York. His work has been included in numerous group shows, most recently in the 2019 exhibition ‘Vernacular Interior’ at Hales Gallery, New York (curated by Adeze Wilford.)

For further information, contact: info@whitecolumns.org

Checklist

Related Press

The painting Billeterie, 2019, installed on a wall in the gallery’s foyer. A sculptural bust of a Black man displayed on a pedestal behind a visitors service desk. To the right, a Black man in a suit leans against the desk. The bust and the man’s face are rendered realistically, while the rest of the scene consists of soft washes of sienna and blue.
Two large paintings installed on adjacent walls. Entrée, 2019 on the left wall is significantly larger than Gratuite, 2019 installed to the right.
Three paintings installed on white walls. Entrée, 2019 is installed on the left wall, while Collections Permanentes, 2019 is on the right and Gratuite, 2019 at the back.
Collections Permanentes, 2019, mounted on a white wall. A vaguely rendered scene. A visitor speaks to a museum attendant, who sits behind a visitors services desk. Above them, a sign obscures a sculptural bust of a Black man. The visible portion of the bust is meticulously and realistically rendered.
Two very large paintings installed on opposite facing white walls to the right and left. In the center, two monitors placed on the floor play Petit Palais, 2019.
Petit Palais, 2019, playing on two stacked CRT monitors. The top monitor displays a blurry video of a hall lined with marble statues. The bottom displays the Petit Palais museum logo.
A sculptural bust of a Black woman wearing a head wrap, displayed on a pedestal near the visitor service desk of a museum where a white attendant sits behind a computer. The scene, save for the bust and the attendant’s head, is rendered in vague washes of color and faint sketches.
A museum lobby scene, rendered vaguely in light washes of color with a sculptural bust of a Black woman wearing a head wrap displayed on a pedestal at the center. The bust is rendered in full detail.

Esteban Jefferson, installation view, 2019-2020. (The painting Billeterie, 2019, installed on a wall in the gallery’s foyer. A sculptural bust of a Black man displayed on a pedestal behind a visitors service desk. To the right, a Black man in a suit leans against the desk. The bust and the man’s face are rendered realistically, while the rest of the scene consists of soft washes of sienna and blue.)

Esteban Jefferson, installation view, 2019-2020. (Two large paintings installed on adjacent walls. Entrée, 2019 on the left wall is significantly larger than Gratuite, 2019 installed to the right.)

Esteban Jefferson, installation view, 2019-2020. (Three paintings installed on white walls. Entrée, 2019 is installed on the left wall, while Collections Permanentes, 2019 is on the right and Gratuite, 2019 at the back.)

Esteban Jefferson, installation view, 2019-2020. (Collections Permanentes, 2019, mounted on a white wall. A vaguely rendered scene. A visitor speaks to a museum attendant, who sits behind a visitors services desk. Above them, a sign obscures a sculptural bust of a Black man. The visible portion of the bust is meticulously and realistically rendered.)

Esteban Jefferson, installation view, 2019-2020. (Two very large paintings installed on opposite facing white walls to the right and left. In the center, two monitors placed on the floor play Petit Palais, 2019.)

Esteban Jefferson, installation view, 2019-2020. (Petit Palais, 2019, playing on two stacked CRT monitors. The top monitor displays a blurry video of a hall lined with marble statues. The bottom displays the Petit Palais museum logo.)

Esteban Jefferson, Gratuite, 2019. Oil on linen 42 × 60 in. (A sculptural bust of a Black woman wearing a head wrap, displayed on a pedestal near the visitor service desk of a museum where a white attendant sits behind a computer. The scene, save for the bust and the attendant’s head, is rendered in vague washes of color and faint sketches.)

Esteban Jefferson, Entrée, 2019. Oil on linen 76 × 120 in. (A museum lobby scene, rendered vaguely in light washes of color with a sculptural bust of a Black woman wearing a head wrap displayed on a pedestal at the center. The bust is rendered in full detail.)