The Concept of Self

Painter Jen Mann’s new show is a twisty-turny​ spiral into an almost absurd amount of meta reflection—paintings of other paintings, of art galleries, mirrors, fake magazine covers, film stills of films that don’t exist, self-portraits of self-portraits— but deep down in her hyper-colored world of self-satire and fourth-wall-breaking imagery is a mirror that is aimed not at Mann, but the viewer.

- Jen Mann

“I’ve not found myself in my paintings, and I’m not entirely interested in finding myself. I’m mostly interested in the concept of self,” the Toronto-based painter says. “So it comes down to not who I, Jen Mann, am, but what is our culture’s fascination with the self and how can I frame that in a way that’s a happy kind of illusion? I’m always continuously searching for meaning, not so much who we are, but what it means to be alive. I could make a narrative on Instagram but if I look at it closely enough do I really see who I am in it? It’s almost dissociative. It’s hard to know where life ends and a weird simulation begins.”