Jacqueline Surdell approaches her studio practice with the meticulous precision of craft and the unbridled spontaneity of contemporary painting. She reimagines the woven canvas as a space of undulation and growth. As the expanded histories of painting materialize in her work as content, simultaneously, swollen tendrils and textures of bound rope deny illusions of the classically painted picture plane. The works actively work to bridge the division between painting and sculpture. In this way, her work calls into association other binary categorizations such as rigid and collapsed, construction techniques cod-ed as masculine or feminine, and ontological spaces between body and sculpture. Her energetic and materially grounded practice brings to attention the tools, environments, and actions that contain and display performances of labor, history, and power.

Surdell lives and works in Chicago, IL. Recent solo and small group exhibitions include Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Fran-cisco, UW Parkside, Kenosha, Apparatus Projects, Chicago, Heaven Gallery, Chicago, and Chicago Artists’s Coalition, Chicago. Group exhibitions include Kunsthal KadE, Amersfoort, Netherlands, South Bend Museum of Art, South Bend, IN, Western Exhibitions, Chicago, and Antenna.Works, New Orleans.