Jessica Wynne “Do Not Erase”

Edwynn Houk Gallery

[Image: David Gabai "Princeton University" (2019)]

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Edwynn Houk Gallery presents its inaugural exhibition of artworks by Jessica Wynne (American, b. 1972), Do Not Erase. The show includes medium- and large-scale photographs from the artist’s newest body of work, images of mathematicians’ chalkboards and the formulas scribbled, erased, and recalculated on them.

Do Not Erase contemplates the meaning, emotion, energy, and visual beauty of symbols and the process of discovery. Her photographs—which can easily be mistaken for three-dimensional chalkboards—illuminate the narrative, linguistic, and visionary elements of these representations, providing timeless meditation on the abstraction and intimacy of visual expression.

Wynne studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and Yale University before moving to New York City in 1999. She was first introduced to the allure of chalkboards through her neighbors Amie Wilkinson and Benson Farb, mathematics professors from the University of Chicago. Intrigued by the imagery she saw on these boards, Wynne directed her focus toward capturing—rather than deciphering—the meaning and beauty of these symbols. Reminiscent of Cy Twombly’s “blackboard” paintings and Brice Marden’s serpentine Letters canvases, Wynne’s blackboards illuminate the power of the whirling web of shapes, numbers, and calculations scribbled in the heat of discovery.

In spring 2021, Princeton Press published a monograph of this series, also entitled Do Not Erase. Wynne’s work has recently been featured in The New York Times and National Geographic, amongst other publications, and prints are in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library in New York City. Wynne lives in New York and is an associate professor of photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology.