Jesse Mockrin

In her paintings, Jesse Mockrin redeploys recurrent subjects and symbols depicted in historical figurative paintings by European masters, shifting the narrative focus to question ideas like bodily autonomy and the fluidity of identity. Mockrin excises corporeal fragments from the mythological and iconographic scenes that comprise her source material, often extracting details from numerous works by different artists portraying the same subjects or events. Painting these cropped sections anew and combining elements from works with similar themes produced at different moments in history, Mockrin’s fractured panels collapse and subvert chronological art historical developments: limbs, faces, and torsos from various sources blend into each other to form ambiguous, multiplied identities. Absent their original narrative contexts or gender signifiers, Mockrin’s figures ambiguously writhe and contort according to the manipulations of unseen forces outside of frame.