“prima materia” / “Lipid Matrix”
Jesse Genepi is an artist influenced by his experiences engaging with science fiction, technology, and esoterica. His paintings undulate with a history of marks and appear encrusted with energetic data. Jesse’s syncretic art-making process plays into the idea of artist-as-alchemist and incorporates a variety of media such as painting, collage, poetry, and photography. His paintings are intended to have an immediate visual availability for the viewers. Saturated color, metallic shimmering surfaces and manifold textural marks allow for an active and changing experience. Subtractive carving and scratching of the thick oil paint becomes a game of hiding of revealing. These emergent forms are embedded into the physical world as densely layered paintings that bend & warp, light and space inducing a trance-like quality synonymous with the psychedelic experience that digital media has effectively lulled us into. Jesse is a 21st century artist making work that reflect his environments, both physical and digital.
Continuing with his alchemical pursuits in the studio, Jesse created prima materia, a limited edition art book that is his take on a contemporary cryptic grimoire. Included within, is a suite of his Lipid Matrix oil paintings, film photography, collaborative ai-poetry and digital artworks created between 2019-2021. It was conceptualized around the alchemical concept of "prima materia" and explores syncretic magickal thinking through technology. The prima materia in alchemical histories, represents the ubiquitous starting matter; it was imagined as intermediary between utter chaos and perfection, holding every substance, but in an occluded form. The architecture of the biological world has been the most readily available muse to artists throughout history, and Jesse hoped to find his own prima materia within the bubbling sulphuric gasses of Yellowstone, the petrified forests of New Mexico, or the clumps of salt bordering the expansive Great Salt Lake of the American West. Additionally, cryptic poetry gives subtle clues towards deciphering the embedded visual content. The printed media format of a book becomes an intermediary between the physical and digital worlds, while still providing a tactile experience and physical record.
