Year of Monkey 2016

James Jean conjures "Year of the Monkey" with a palette of ghostly whites, steely blues, and muted reds. It's as if the artist let the image emerge from a dream, each line and shade coaxing these ethereal monkey figures into being. I can imagine Jean, hunched over his work, caught in a dance between intention and accident, allowing the ink to pool and flow, dictating its own terms. The monkeys are enveloped in swirling forms, somewhere between smoke and ectoplasm. The paint is thin, almost transparent, so the figures seem to exist in a liminal space. That top monkey’s wide-eyed gaze, it gives me a pang of sympathy – what’s he seen? Perhaps Jean, in making this piece, was tapping into some primal fear or maybe just the sheer absurdity of existence. I see him as a kindred spirit, searching for something just beyond the surface. I see a conversation across time, an echo of uncertainty.