May 7 - June 27, 2020

Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present Seattle-based painter Jaq Chartier's SunTests. This new series of dye sublimation prints on aluminum are time-based "image captures" of the artist's ongoing explorations of material phenomena. Chartier's unique process-based practice shares a visual language with Color Field painting and combines her fascination with materiality, time, and conditions. Inspired by DNA gel electrophoresis (a technique for separation and analysis of macromolecules and their fragments), her work is about discovery and pairs scientific investigations with conceptual themes of impermanence.

The SunTests series records the mutability and transformation of intensely brilliant, jewel-toned colors created from fugitive dyes, inks, and stains that change over time when exposed to sunlight. The experimental processes continue in the paintings in Chartier's studio, while the prints on view in the gallery offer glimpses into suspended moments of their metamorphosis. 

Multiple groupings selected by the artist allow viewers to witness the evolution of colors and shapes in visibly distinctive phases of change. Lively structured rows of blurred, animated abstractions in the triptych, SunTest #3 (Day 1, 12, 35) continually delight with unexpected color shifts, each one infused with the poetic vulnerability of their evanescence.

Jaq Chartier is known for her rigorous Testing series, which explores scientific methods through experimentation with paints, pigments, dyes and inks. Chartier's artworks incorporate elements of color field painting, process art and minimalism. Jaq Chartier received her BFA from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA) and her MFA at the University of Washington (Seattle, WA). She has exhibited widely at such venues as the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (San Jose, CA), Zentrum Paul Klee (Bern, Switzerland), Kunstmuseum Ahlen (Ahlen, Germany), Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA), Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley, CA), Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, WA), and Bellevue Art Museum (Bellevue, WA). Her work is included in many public and private collections, including the Schwartz Art Collection at Harvard Business School (Cambridge, MA), Progressive Art Collection (Cleveland, OH) and the Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA).