'places where we have been' art series illustrates familiar stills of human experience

Jordan West’s artworks respond to common human experiences

Artist Jordan West explores the experience of the individual in the socially constructed, and human-built environment through a series of colorful paintings. ‘Places Where We Have Been’ illustrates familiar settings and specific encounters of place and time. Through a process of personal experience, photographic documentation, editing, and painting realization, the American artist reduces and clarifies the description of space as a stylized representation of reality, a mechanical facsimile, and a ‘simulacrum’. The series forms an artistic transposition to a specific time and place, at once familiar, common, and unsettling. The work redirects the viewers to their own memories and experiences prompted and triggered by the artist’s reflective considerations and physical projection of the image onto the canvas.

‘Waiting In Transit’, 2016, gouache on paper, 13 x 23 inches | all images courtesy of Jordan West

paintings capture familiar landscapes in specific moments in time

The project displays still images of man-made landscapes in multiple paint hues. The scenic pictures give off a melancholic atmosphere and form relatable portraits capturing specific moments in time. Connecting to the artist’s personal history, observations, and obfuscated intimacies, the viewers project and recall their own memory, thoughts, feelings, and experience, and construct their own narrative. West claims an effort, in practice, to extract the self, the artist, from the work in order to allow the observer to create their own story, a more expansive space in which to interact and recall. However, the index of the artist is very present through the application of paint and color, the draftsmanship, the composition, and the rigorous conceptual support behind the works. Jordan West presents his experience to the viewer while ‘maintaining a reflection of the notions of fate, the sublime, isolation, dream, memory, vision, and history’, as he suggests. 

‘Quick-Stop’, 2016, gouache on paper, 15 x 22 inches

‘Places Where We Have Been’ no. 3, 2015, gouache on paper, 21 x 30 inches

‘Go West Young Man’ no. 11, 2005, gouache on paper, 15 x 22 inches

‘Places Where We Have Been’ no. 1, 2014, gouache on paper, 21 x 30 inches

‘Go West Young Man’ no. 12, 2005, gouache on paper, 15 x 22 inches

‘Alone At Last’, 2016, gouache on paper, 13 x 23 inches

‘For Rent’, 2019, gouache on paper, 16 x 28 inches

‘Attention All Shoppers’ no. 7, 2020, oil on panel, 36 x 36 inches

‘Hotel’, 2022, oil on linen, 40 x 60 inches

project info:

name: Places Where We Have Been
artist: Jordan West | @jordanweststudio

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom