2018 Broken Artist Dreams - Mammal Gallery Atlanta GA

STATEMENT

For Walker Keith Jernigan’s second exhibition with Mammal gallery the artist continues to explore boundaries between artistic disciplines – combining painting, sculpture, installation and performance. His fascination with neon is clear as a large skull and cross bones appear in the gallery’s two store front windows. Inside the space it looks as though a metal box on the floor is being constricted by a purple neon tube. On the wall, a canvas like object is also being squeezed by two neon tubes. A black substance puddles on the floor underneath the objects. The same black substance surrounds a bathtub full of black water with images dancing on the ripples as a painted body lifts from the tub. A constant buzzing fills the space it is too loud to be from the neon, it is the sound of a tattoo needle marking the artists flesh with the same words from Dylan Thomas’ poem, Find Meat on Bones that appears on the gallery wall.Feeling the strain in this meeting ground of opposing forces, I retreat from the dark, back corner of the gallery avoiding hanging ropes and old sea bottles scattered on the floor. This is when I rediscover or really discover the one painting hung on the wall. I had walked right by it on the way in. It depicts a canvas being folded in half. The same black substance seems to ooze out of top and sides. I have seen this shape spatter somewhere else on the walls. I turn to look for it and nearly collide with a man. He is painted all black except for a white skull and cross bones on his face and across his chest. He walks up to the large cross bone neon. He steps onto the storefront ledge and stares transfixed on the light. I am lead back to the pivotal question, What are the artist’s broken dreams?.. and could it really be a broken dream if that was the motivation to present such a spectacle? I have to ask. In all the neon and noise I track down the artist and watch him nod as I plead to ask a single question. I bite down on my pen as his eyes dance over me. I blurt out - What is the most detrimental thing to an artist, or a piece of artwork? His eyes become still as he looks back into mine, his lips begin to part... A friend of his grabs his shoulder and leads him away. I can only imagine what the answer will be.

2016 Repurposed Aggression - Mammal Gallery Atlanta GA

Can you contain? Can you sublimate? Sometimes I have the feeling I can. Sometimes a particular vision takes a form inside me. Sometimes this happens outside, it becomes a real thing and I feel contained and sublimated. When there is a specific form outside of me, I can restart giving shape to something else, because this process never ends.

Repurposed Aggression is a condition of urgency, where uncontrollable, difficult explosions happening inside find ways to come out as a form. This form is dangerous, on the edge of the abyss, yet contained, sublimated and perfect in its own way.

Repurposed Aggression is a long path. Showing its forms can be a frightening exposure. It can hurt but also liberates an awareness of what else runs through our veins, and lets it out.

The shift from a sports career to an artistic one is the spark that moved Walker Keith Jernigan. That shift is one of abandonment and surrender to art, giving the world forms, disbanding a sense of anxious ownership thus letting them be real devices for everyone. Repurposed Aggression is love, cash, soccer balls, baseball bats, an arrow, ropes, lights, a punching bag. – Daria Filardo