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Standing in front of Jeremy Le Grand’s paintings up at Well Well Projects this month—especially the large-scale ones—is disorienting. Your eyes may start to cross while your brain tries to make sense of the patterns. It feels like getting lost in a Magic Eye poster in a 1990s bedroom, waiting for a dolphin to pop into 3D.
The feedback at the opening reception of Le Grand’s show yelling at the sun, which is on view through Oct. 27, had some common themes.
“One thing I got multiple times was, are there hidden bodies in there?” Le Grand says. “That sounds really dark, but it means, are there figural elements? Are there faces? Because one thing that tends to happen from the layering is secondary and tertiary patterns pop up.”
This goes back to Le Grand’s process. The 39-year-old artist (and one of the founders of Well Well Projects in 2021) begins by dripping paint on a canvas and then squeegeeing it around to come up with a color family. After it dries, he uses thin masking tape to make parallel lines or another pattern, seals it with a clear coat, paints another layer, lets it dry, and so on until the painting is done.
Creating the grids is a time-consuming process, one that he balances with a full-time job and parenting a 3-year-old with his wife, sculptor Jessie Weitzel Le Grand. The largest works, like the 4-by-5-foot an accumulation of forgotten glances, take eight to 10 hours just for one layer of masking.
Le Grand has always been interested in optical illusions and trompe-l’oeil paintings. He enjoys how this new suite of paintings feels a bit like trying to find objects in cloud formations (or hallucinating on shrooms, for those who partake). Some of his reference points in his artist statement include “the infinite scroll” of modern technology, and there is certainly a digital, repetitive quality to many of the pieces. (Another surprising reference: the painting an accumulation of forgotten glances was inspired by the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Predator, specifically the way the rainforest aliens could bend light around their bodies.)
He originally planned for the show to be all 18-inch canvases, and many of them still are that size. But he went big for a few pieces and is pleased with their surprising sense of depth.
“I realized that I was limiting the physical effect they could have,” Le Grand says. “I wanted there to be an opportunity for the viewer to get close and feel enveloped in a surface.”
SEE IT: Yelling at the sun by Jeremy Le Grand at Well Well Projects, 837 N Interstate Ave., #1, wellwellprojects.com. Noon-5 pm Saturday-Sunday, through Oct. 27. Free.
