Jenni Crain at Gordon Robichaux, New York

The centerpiece of Crain’s solo show is the debut of the artist’s final artwork, Untitled (2021/2025), a large basswood floor sculpture installed in Suite 907 as Crain envisioned it for the room. In December 2021, days before her passing, Crain visited Gordon Robichaux to discuss her upcoming exhibition and share her ideas for a new wood sculpture conceived for the gallery’s smaller space. When she arrived, she mapped out a large rectangle on the floor for her object (roughly 105 x 90 inches), considered space for a wheelchair to move around it, described its material and visual qualities (“wood, complex joinery, lattice, screens, optical moiré…”), and presented numerous fabrication drawings for it. This would be her largest and most ambitious sculpture to date. She went on to loosely describe a second work that she envisioned for the wall: a large ribbon made of Japanese paper tied around a wooden peg and inspired by a similar object her fabricator created for a boat restoration. Unfortunately, she presented no drawings or further details for this latter work.

With the instruction of Crain’s precise drawings and measurements for the floor sculpture, Gordon Robichaux collaborated with The Jenni Crain Foundation, as well as her friend artist Miles Huston, and woodworkers Brian Nichols and Matthew Granick (fabricators of Crain’s recent works), to realize her final artwork.

The Untitled sculpture comprises two nearly identical rectangular wood structures—93 x 60 x 3 and 93 x 57 x 3 inches respectively—that occupy a large portion of the center of the room. Each is constructed with a lattice of rectilinear wooden segments that delineate a geometric grid of sixty 6 x 6 inch square voids. The two structures rest on short wooden dowels, or legs, of varied lengths (6 or 3 inches), and sit perpendicular to the floor. Arranged side by side as two low, horizontal planes, one of the panels rests on, and partially overlaps, the other.

Consistent with Crain’s previous works, Untitled distills a range of references related to the artist’s interest in the built environment: wood, joinery, furniture, and architecture. The sculpture’s tiered structure implies motion stilled, evoking screens, doors, or gates held in a fleeting, liminal moment of transition. Its production and display are the fulfilment of Crain’s vision for the object, its specific presence in this room, and its potential to exist elsewhere in future contexts. In the physical absence of the artist and the large ribbon tied to a peg, we embrace Crain’s insistence on considering that which is transient and fugitive—experience, memory, emotion, and the human body—in relation to the placement of an object in space.

In Suite 925, Gordon Robichaux has assembled Untitled Exhibition (for Jenni), a group exhibition with works by twenty artists Crain championed through her research and curatorial practice: Kan Asakura, March Avery, Justin Chance, Talia Chetrit, Tee Corinne, Loretta Dunkelman, Joachim “Yoyo” Friedrich, Nick Fusaro, Ann Gillen, Anna Glantz, Janice Guy, Maren Hassinger, Becky Howland, Miles Huston, Alex Ito, Lee Mary Manning, Kate Millett, Matt Paweski, Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, and Owen Westberg. This network of artists and objects illuminates Crain’s wide-ranging interests and relationships as well as the continued life and relevance of her legacy.

at Gordon Robichaux, New York
until June 15, 2025