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March 14, 2016 – Review
Jeanette Mundt’s “Heroin: Cape Cod, USA”
Tess Edmonson
Of the six paintings that make up Jeanette Mundt’s “Heroin: Cape Cod, USA,” three render figures of women at rest. Of these, Jeanette Mundt (all works 2016) is a self-portrait; we see her body contorted into the archetypal pose of the butt selfie: the back side of her body facing the plane of the image, with shoulders and head twisted around to point the camera. Here, in their translation from photograph to painting, the artist’s hands, face, and camera (phone)—what’s typically a dense site for information—are obscured by a greyish specter, left unarticulated. In the hands of another artist the gesture of painting a selfie might feel cheap, but Mundt—simultaneously painter, photographer, viewer, and model, both subject and object—gives it grace, teaching viewers how to see a body seeing itself.
The scope of the adjacent artwork (Another Double Mountain and the Modern Sofa) feels radically different, with a sort of ugly modernist sofa affixed to an upright painted panel featuring the Alps’ Matterhorn. In the painting, the mountain’s blue peak is reflected in the waters of a deep pool at its base, with bands of paint leaking downwards. A second smaller slope bisects the image, supersaturated with rust, ochre, and peacock …