Devon Dejardin's Pareidolia Is A Reflection of Your Inner Psyche @ Carl Kostyál in Stockholm

 
 

Devon Dejardin’s new solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures takes its name from the strange and universal phenomenon wherein we see faces in abstract imagery. In a broader sense, pareidolia is the perception of scrutable objects in any kind of nebulous stimulus. We see animals in cloud formations and hear voices in white noise. From Rorschach’s inkblot tests, to hidden messages in a record played backwards, to Jesus Christ on a piece of toast, there are endless examples of our unconscious tendency to discern meaning and order in the face of chaos. For Dejardin, these works are guardians. They draw together elements of various faiths and belief systems. What you see when you look at any of these pieces may differ depending on your own belief systems, your relationship to art history, the conversation you were just having, and your emotional wellbeing. You might find that when you step away and come back to any given work that you can’t remember if you’ve seen it before or if you’re in fact looking at a new painting. Layer by layer, the works reflect aspects of our inner psyche back at us, like mirrored building blocks that reveal the ever shifting unconscious mind as it wanders around in real time.

Pareidolia is on view through July 21st @ Carl Kostyál Hospitalet, Sjökvarnsbacken 15, 131 71 Nacka, Stockholm

Devon DeJardin "Echoes Of The Past" Opens This Week @ Albertz Benda In New York

Albertz Benda presents the second solo exhibition with the gallery by Los Angeles based artist Devon DeJardin. In this exhibition entitled Echoes of the Past, the artist has reimagined Old Master  portrait paintings, redefining a visual language for the traditional genre. DeJardin’s new paintings are the culmination of five years of his exploration into what the artist terms secular ‘guardians,’ who appear as central figures in his compositions. Comprised of geometric shapes assembled into  anthropomorphic forms, the guardians have a distinctly modernist feel in their tenuous balance between figure and abstraction: 20th century artists from diverse contexts including Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Yves Tanguy come to mind as significant inspiration.  

In Echoes of the Past, the artist delves further back across art historical eras, interpreting his portraits through the lens of Flemish Primitive and Italian Renaissance artists to the Dutch Golden Age and Spanish Romantic  masters. While classical portraiture throughout these epochs focused primarily on royalty and pinnacles of  society, DeJardin’s paintings conjure imaginary guardians that protect a wounded society.  

The cheerful themes of DeJardin’s earlier work have evolved into a darker, more limited palette, reinterpreting  choices by many of history’s greatest artists, including Goya, van Eyck, and Rembrandt. They are conceptual reflections of the era in which the artist has lived as DeJardin’s generation has never known life in a world without war—from the Gulf War and the War on Terror to the ongoing conflicts in the Ukraine and the Middle East. DeJardin metaphorically and physically mines the darkness in society to create his work, using shading and light to subtly tease figures from abstract shapes. The orb-like eyes of his figures appear lighter in tone, signifying a purity of spirit and hope for the future.

As always, his paintings are notable for their meticulous rendering. His figures are so sculptural that they almost seem to emerge from the wall. DeJardin goes straight to the canvas, working without a maquette to depict the figure and background in an organic, liberatory process. In recent years the artist has experimented with framing devices for these figures, including floral, architectural, or landscape imagery. In each of the new canvases, the background corresponds to the era from which the artist reimagined the imagery: six smaller works reflect the intimate and domestic scale of Dutch Golden Age paintings, while two larger vertical works lean on an Italian Renaissance tradition, complete with landscape and drapery surrounding the figures. The show serves as a testament to the enduring power of portraiture as a genre of storytelling, with each painting offering a glimpse into shared human experience across centuries. 

On view from March 7 to April 13 at Albertz Benda NYC. 515 W. 26th Street, New York, New York

Moving Past Giants: Read Our Interview Of Artist Devon DeJardin

Devon Dejardin sits in front of a couch, arm resting on the cushion, looking into the camera.

text by Stella Peacock-Berardini

Devon Dejardin’s exploration of art may have started from the humble encouragement of a sugar daddy psychic, but it has grown into a journey of healing and reflection that continues to drive his success in the art world. Within his cubist-influenced style of work, Devon Dejardin, an LA-based painter, processes through the elements of life demanding answers to all of its most urgent lingering questions. Dejardin employs his work as a way to unpack and understand the entropic nature of the universe through his lens of belonging, going deeper into the storms he's faced that brought him to the clear sky of his creation. This 29-year-old, self-taught artist originating from Portland juggles depression and anxiety within the creative realm and expresses his gratitude for the therapeutic release his art supplies to himself and its viewers. His newest project, Giants dives into this preconceived idea of spirituality and shifts its narrative to his ideas surrounding the guardians of the world, those that protect, aid, and grow in strength and vulnerability within the boundaries of our world. His art, huge in size, mimics the ideas of giants and how they are commonly perceived, yet it develops further than that. These feelings, or challenges in life, such as sadness or grief materialize as giants, but represent the deception life can have on us all. We sat down with this artist to explore his influences, conceptions around his work as a whole, and his first New York solo exhibition at Albertz Benda. Read more.