Jennifer Bolande

For the past six years, Jennifer Bolande has looked to newspapers for conceptual inspiration while also employing them as physical source material.

On view at Magenta Plains, “The Composition of Decomposition” explores the results of the artist’s ongoing interest in newspapers through a presentation of new and recent pieces: from sculptural installations incorporating entire print editions of newspapers to a series of disparate clippings reproduced as photographic prints. The occasion also marks the artist’s first solo show in New York since 2008.

Ultimately, Bolande’s aim with this body of work is to highlight the function of newspapers, specifically in terms of their role as a medium through which recent events become indexed—and, eventually, integrated—into collective, historical narratives.

From the gallery:

This body of work began with a picture Bolande came across in the New York Times of a group of 14th century plague victims whose remains had been excavated from a London cemetery. Gradually yellowing in her archive, this image of decomposing bones launched Bolande on a six-year inquiry into newspapers as shapers of meaning.