Xylor Jane
Parrasch Heijnen Gallery
When tasked with explaining Xylor Jane’s paintings, writers often start with the numbers. They explain that Jane uses magic squares, prime palindromes, and counting spirals to construct her systematic, grid-based paintings of geometric forms and numerals. They often comment on the exactitude of her nearly lenticular application of brightly hued pigments and wrap it all up with references to the transcendent, the occult, the magical, or the cosmic. This pairing—matter and spirit—has been identified by several art historians as the special paradox of modern painting. In her 1978 essay “Grids,”