NARANJO 141 is pleased to present Shadowboxing, a solo exhibition of new works by Jared Owens (b.1968, Queens, NY). This will mark the artist’s first presentation in Mexico.

Owens investigates the states of incarceration — psychological, physical, and emotional— that mark a global social order increasingly fixated on surveillance and the extraction of capital. Through a wide-ranging disciplinary practice that encompasses linoleum block prints and painterly abstraction, Owens creates visual palimpsests that reflect the uncertainty, trauma, and alienation that stem from a universal loss of individual agency.

Built around his signature silhouetted figures, the works in Shadowboxing evoke associations that span epochs: herds of figures are clustered on to canvases like the decks of middle passage ships, or left to wander the vague indications of man-made encampments like prison yards. In abstract canvases, lyrical mark-making frees a thwarted human pulse, channeling AbEx while pulling from an ageless, primordial palette. Owens’ process of repeated physical engagement by methodically applying stamps and beating canvases against the studio walls gives the works a rhythmic undercurrent— the one-two, one-two of prisoners pounding on concrete to communicate to each other in morse-code— that opens a direct inquiry into symbology and mathematical notation. Taken as a whole, this presentation of works offers an insight into the power dynamics of captivity and imprisonment, tracing the roots of a system that thrives on oppression while inviting the viewer to reflect on the experiences of victimhood and complicity that affect all of us.

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