The Promised Land

When Jeremy Mann wrapped work on his first feature-length film earlier this year, he immediately recognized the importance of his breakthrough in the medium. “…I will continue to film forever,” he says. “It’s a language which fills my soul with poetry.”

- Jeremy Mann

The film, The Conductor, a cerebral and at times surreal journey into an artistic dreamscape—think Lars von Trier or Nicolas Winding Refn, but shot with a painter’s sense of color and composition—allowed Mann to take a four-month hiatus from painting. That break from the easel directly inspired his newest works, on view beginning September 8 at Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles. “…I decided to approach the new paintings with an open air of exploration, drawing from my abstract expressionist background, using tried-and-true techniques I learned from my MFA research (i.e., making myself uncomfortable with the materials and techniques to open new windows in this stale, dusty house) and feeding from something I’ve been developing for a long time now, my darkroom prints of Polaroids from homemade cameras.”

Mann’s paintings—both his evocative figures and his shimmering cityscapes—have long featured unfinished edges, blocks of raw color and abstracted elements that sought to frame his subjects within an emotional veil of expression, but his new works are transcending even further into this shattering realm of color and form.