Jerry KEARNS
Zero-Sum
January 15 - March 7, 2026
Opening Reception Thursday, January 15th, 6-8PM
Summary
Modernism is pleased to present Jerry KEARNS: Zero-Sum. The artist’s 11th solo exhibition with the gallery features six paintings and nine drawings, in which Kearns employs the ever-present vocabulary of popular culture, film, TV, cartoons, advertising, photographs, etc., to describe our reality where mediated information has replaced direct experience.
In a vein the artist dubs “Psychological Pop,” Kearns samples and repurposes the visual vocabulary which defines perception and shapes contemporary mythology. “I aim for psychological history paintings reflecting the time and place where we live,” he says. In a fashion similar to the early works of James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol, Kearns’s works strive for moral consciousness. And with a title like Zero-Sum, it is evident that the cultural state Kearns portrays is that of a win-lose scenario.
Kearns’s recent paintings and drawings are a departure from the overt political narratives with concrete bipartisan positions in his early work, and a shift to a more nuanced examination of social issues that emerged as a byproduct of pervasive present-day political strategies for retaining power. Kearns’s work is no longer glaringly partisan, but contemplative of the divisiveness coming from every direction and the social breakdown that ensues.
“I want my art to tell stories about the reality I experience, hopefully, to share in shaping social meaning,” says Kearns. “During the time I was making the works in this show I was aware of a much more transactional mindset pervading public thought.” This transactionality is depicted rather literally in paintings like, The Dealmaker, where a finely dressed 1940s woman extends a stack of money, asking “This makes us even, right? Do you take cash?”
“While the need to connect and build relationships was as important as ever, the political culture was pushing us ever further into self-involved isolation,” explains Kearns. This isolation is manifested in Kearns’s lonely compositions which depict only a single subject each. In comparison to Kearns’s prior work, delightfully cacophonous and often teeming with multiple characters in vivid color, these new, mostly pastel, paintings and drawings, like the modern life, feel empty and void of connection. Ironically however, many of Kearns’s subjects seem to be mid-conversation with another person, via Roy Lichtenstein-esque speech bubbles, but with the other conversation participant not depicted, their actual existence becomes a question more than a reality.
The artist explains “The use of the 1950’s cartoons reflect my desire to locate personal / psychological dialogues that read as implications of long-term societal shifts away from the values of an earlier moment in America’s cultural history. The quieting of the compositions along with the pastel colors suggest memories of things gone by. The image becomes a dream-like echo of personal and societal loss."
The sentiment is seen in compositions like Lady’s Man, where a lone gentleman rendered in graphite over a solid sage background is bent over in grief, contemplating Why don’t you love me like you used to? While the words feel romantic, the messaging is universal. “Sharing community, forming empathy for the other, was receding into the past,” says Kearns. “I tried to capture something of that loss in these paintings.”
Jerry Kearns has exhibited internationally across the Americas, Europe, and Asia since the 1980s. He has been featured many times in The New York Times, Art and Auction, ARTnews, and Artforum, among others. His paintings are included in many public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), National Galerie (Berlin), Brooklyn Museum (New York), the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), The Norton Family Collection (Los Angeles), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, AMFA (Little Rock), and Queensland Art Gallery (Queensland, Australia).
Press
Jerry KEARNS
Press Release - Fact Witness
2019-12-21
