Winston Wächter Fine Art, New York is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Jil Weinstock and Amanda Manitach. Working in different media, both artists create purposeful patterns in their works through the arrangement of objects, lines, and text as a means to create symbolic narratives about identity and place. Both Weinstock and Manitach explore language in their work, examining and playing with the shifting meaning of text as its context is changed or removed.
Amanda Manitach creates large-scale drawings depicting phrases drawn from poetry, personal reflections, banal musings of celebrities, or phrases overheard from strangers. The expressions she depicts are brief, and alternate between poetry and vulgarity. Other phrases are responsive to specific places or cities. Her piece devoted to New York contains a rambling, dreamy list of words that combine to create a sense of place, reading in part: “You Had Me At Pizza, Bagels, Upper West, Lower East, Post No Bills…” Manitach grew up in a religious Christian household, which instilled a devotion to the written word through the study of scripture. This upbringing has inspired her lifelong fascination with the pliability and symbolic nature of text and language as evident throughout her work.
Manitach places her text against a background of lush patterning drawn in colored pencil and inspired by Victorian domestic wallpaper design. The dense and decadent designs fade in and out as they interplay with the text, weaving in between the letters and dissolving at the edges. Manitach’s pieces are large, yet her labor-intensive practice reveals the process and hand of the artist, creating personal and intimate pieces.
Jil Weinstock’s new series of rubber and mixed media works explores patriotism, nationalism, and immigration through flower arrangements suspended in rubber. 50 States of Flowers features an array of embroidered state flowers from the United States, examining how flowers can become symbols of identity and pride of place. Other works feature plants that are non-native species or invasive weeds. As she selects and arranges them, Weinstock asks us to reconsider weeds as the valuable life forms they are. The weeds press against the borders and boundaries of the works, and in some cases extend outside of the rubber field and frame. Weinstock grew to respect the tenaciousness of weeds, and in her work they have become a metaphor for the experience of immigrants coming to live permanently in a foreign land. Like weeds, immigrants settle in areas where they are often rejected, yet they resist the often unfriendly and unfavorable environment and replant their own roots. Weinstock further explores the concept of immigration through her series Gibberish, which depict the tweets on immigration by Donald Trump. The raised letters of the words are depicted as a mirror image on magnesium plates, which can be used as printing plates.
Jil Weinstock frequently uses rubber as a binding agent to preserve objects and the memories or feelings they elicit. Her practice transforms everyday objects into items of contemplation. Born in Los Angeles, California, Weinstock studied at the University of California Berkeley, where she received her BFA and MFA. She currently works and resides in New York City.
Amanda Manitach uses imagery to invoke issues surrounding female psychology, physicality, and sexuality. Her large-scale drawings address the historical, often-gendered psychology of the decorative arts. Residing and working in Seattle, Washington, Manitach has exhibited at the Frye Art Museum, Bellevue Arts Museum, and Tacoma Art Museum. She served as the curator of Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University for several years, and co-founded and co-directed multiple mixed-use arts spaces in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, including TMRW Party and The Factory.
