Abattoir Gallery is thrilled to present Thrum, the first solo exhibition at the gallery for Cleveland-based artist Jen P. Harris, opening May 1 from 6–8 PM.
Harris presents a series of “loom paintings,” a term to describe their unique hybrid paintings on panel and canvas which themselves become looms; structures for the weaving that sits on top of the painted surface. Weaving intuitively across the painted field, Harris creates a sustained interrogation of binaries: painting and textile, surface and structure, visibility and concealment, ultimately proposing a more fluid and unstable field of meaning. Their hybrid “loom paintings” collapse distinctions between mediums, holding them in tension. In so doing, the work resists fixed interpretation, privileging ambiguity as both a visual and philosophical condition.
My paintings conjure elemental frequencies that call established structures into question. Driven by a desire to grapple with the paradoxes of the present, I’ve developed a visual vocabulary that bridges abstraction and figuration, autobiography and history, science and myth…. Working intuitively, I engage with the physical processes of layering, collaging, and weaving, introducing elements of pattern and clandestine imagery that pay homage to queer, occult and abstract histories.
Thrum refers to the energetic activity that occupies the in between space – in between the painting and the weaving. The works do not seek resolution; rather, they sustain an oscillation between states: foreground and ground, image and object, legibility and abstraction.
An essay by curator Sam Adams accompanies the exhibition and will be published as a special booklet. The text situates Harris’s work within a broader art historical and theoretical lineage, tracing connections between textile traditions, abstract painting, and contemporary discourses around identity and embodiment. Adams describes the work as occupying a “dialectical space” in which painting and weaving converge to form a third, irreducible image, one that foregrounds “the space between the layers” as a site of meaning. The essay further expands on the work’s engagement with queerness, materiality, and the destabilization of inherited visual and cultural hierarchies.
Jen P. Harris (b. Virginia) lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. They received a BA from Yale University and an MFA from Queens College, CUNY, and are the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Grant (2025) and an Edward Albee Foundation Fellowship (2026). Their loom paintings are featured in Textiles x Art: How Textiles Are Shaping Contemporary Art (Thames & Hudson, 2025) and Fiber Art Now (2026).
