Jo Dennis: A Glass of Absinthe

Curator: Elisa Carollo
Artist: Jo Dennis

Jo Dennis’s works are deeply embedded in the fabric of life, drawing viewers into their layered complexity. Her paintings, created on repurposed military tents, accumulate stratified marks and layers of paint through an intuitive and almost convulsive process. Dennis’s intensely physical and viscerally engaging approach transforms the act of painting into a metaphor for the overlay of sensations, emotions, and memories that shape the human experience.

She explores the psychosomatic interplay between being and perceiving, often incorporating various objects into her works to anchor them in the material realm. The painterly and bodily traces left on the surface become remnants of past events, reflecting on what is absent, lost, or gone forever—persisting as spectral echoes in memory. Through her spontaneous orchestration of painterly traces, dense layers of marks, and dynamic gestures, Dennis’s works evolve into diaries, capturing the intricate interplay of physical actions and psychological responses that shape existential experience.