JJ Manford's Threshold Painting

My work often depicts domestic spaces. Recently I have been expanding my subject matter to include more exterior spaces and thresholds. This painting leans into the expressive and free quality of inventing landscape, with a Bonnardian sense of light and luminosity.

The Brooklyn-based artist has historically built up electricity in the planes of his pieces using repetitive gestural marks in high chroma, as he references above in his mention of Post-Impressionist master Pierre Bonnard (between 1886 and 1905, the Post-Impressionist era expanded on Impressionism by adding brash colors and symbolism into the mix). As a capture of an interior space, Threshold Painting not only nods to Bonnard–interiors were one of his most popular foci–but expands on the exploration. By compositionally breaking out onto an exterior landscape that evokes the rhythm, energy and palette of many Fauvists (a color-drenched movement concerned with vivid, attacking hues that existed between 1905-1908) and Impressionists (a movement of artists principally interrogating light and color like Van Gogh, Monet, and Gauguin between 1867-1886), Manford skillfully dances between each approach.

The resulting mesmerizing piece glows. Manford also brilliantly incorporates elements of both hard-edged abstraction–like the square orange transom windows–into the piece. Additionally, he infuses Threshold Painting with Modernism, utilizing architectural themes that echo David Hockney's work. The artist incorporates a design object created by someone he admires or an animal into each piece as part of his practice and here, as another Modernist move, is a sculpturally shaped cat that would also seem right at home in one of Hockney’s works. This presence of geometric forms organizes and grounds his riotous palette, giving the piece the power to make any viewer take a deep breath and exhale as if they were there, in that space, behind that cat, looking out at the end of a beautiful day.

+ Limited-edition, exclusive to 20x200
+ Museum quality: archival inks, 100% cotton rag paper unless noted
+ Signed + numbered certificate of authenticity included
+ Directly supports the artist
+ Handcrafted custom-framing is available

Our quoted dimensions are for the size of paper containing the images, not the printed image itself. We do not alter the aspect ratio, nor do we crop or resize the artists’ originals. All of our prints have a minimum border of .5 inches to allow for framing.

Inkpress Duo Matte

10"x8" | Edition of 10
14"x11" | Edition of 200
20"x16" | Edition of 20
30"x24" | Edition of 5

JJ Manford, born 1983 Boston, Massachusetts, lives and works in Brooklyn, USA. Manford received a BFA from Cornell University in 2006, a post-Baccalaureate certificate from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009, and an MFA from Hunter College in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include; Fifth Season, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Jaune Brilliant, Galeria Marta Cervera, Madrid, Spain; Hayden Rowe Street, Derek Eller Gallery, NY, USA; The Golden Pheasant at Flamingo Estate & Other Tales of Wanderlust, Harper’s, East Hampton, NY, USA; In A Western Town, Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA; Our House, Harper’s, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Moon Salon, Derek Eller Gallery, NY, USA. Manford’s work has been acquired by the Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA, ICA Miami, Miami, Florida, USA and Everson Museum of Art of Syracuse, USA. A new publication Rooms: The Works and Life of JJ Manford with text by Gordon F. Sander is out now on aminori.

Sign up for our newsletter to get first access to new editions, catch the freshest commentary + features, and snag a special discount.

Threshold Painting

JJ Manford

Join our mailing list for 15% off