Stemming
from the early form of long-distance communication developed in the
1830s known as telegraphy, the exhibition’s
title, a combination of dots and dashes, is itself an unintelligible
abbreviation of a well known morse code. By today’s
standards an archaic form of technology-based communication,
telegraphy allow ed for an instant long-distance connection between
bodies far removed from one another. In a sense, telegraphy was an
initial form of an abstracted immediate conversation that would
become the inevitable standard for contemporary technological
societies.

All
works in the exhibition share two commonalities: They are round and
painted on wooden panel. Both refer to a particularity within the
challenges of pictorial representation with painting. Jaray
elaborates on these art-historically tested parameters of working
outside a common rectangle and inside a circle’s
central perspective. Further, painting on wooden paneling instead of
canvas allows Jaray an expanded graphic reduction of form and
flatness while annotating to the ancient use of wooden surfaces as
carriers for visual communication.

The
two bodies of work shown in the exhibition express Jaray’s
quest for a progressive reduction of scale, visual contend,
association and arrangement. The small-scale works from 2020 and 2021
shown on the gallery’s
first floor exist in pairs with one panel inevitably linked by color,
contend and form to the other. Each diptych’s
communication is held within, a dialogue of two equal parts with one
conditioning the other’s
existence. The result is an internal communication which presents
itself to the viewer as an encapsulated code or language. Only
together they can articulate themselves. A two- tone line across two
two-tone canvases: what is background color in one, becomes the color
of transposed form in the other. Not one of the two works functions
without the other, it is an interdependency of formal and spatial
dialogue.

What
seems almost impossible if not to move to a painted monochrome is
achieved in Jaray’s
most recent works specifically produced in 2023 for this exhibition.
The 17 very small-scale painted plains are now released from the
limitations of a diptych’s
internal constraints and appear as liberated atoms freely floating,
colliding and bouncing off one another. With these smallest and
formally most reduced works to date, Jaray retreats even further from
a painted as well as conceptual necessity for complex visual
communication. A dash, a dot, a triangle, a square, a circle, a zero
and/on a singular one. Jaray reduces her painterly language to an
inevitable core with each painting becoming a skeleton of definitive
reduction and minimal depiction.

All
that remains, an essential if not ultimate result of many decades of
formal and spatial investigation by the 1937 born artist, are flat
circular planes painted in two-tonal, at times acidic and bright
color combinations. Jaray’s
mastery of form and color appears joyful and at ease. Five basic
graphic forms are arranged one per circular plain across the 17
canvases, each atom speaking for itself as to the others. Painted one
after the other and in different non-corresponding amounts of graphic
shapes, these 17 individual canvases are autonomous, singular
identities yet in close relation to one another. Though any specific
or specified order of things, often seen as a fundamental, is reduced
as much to its essence as is the contend of each individual work.

For
the
first
time,
the
artist
does
not
give
any
guidance
for
their
presentation. Each work’s
plain and proud autonomy exists and expands once activated through
the respective installer’s
or viewer’s
installation wishes. No presentation of this group of works will be
equal to the previous. A perceived order of things is abandoned in
favor of an invitational and individual response to these works in
future exhibitions to come. The works, either titled In the
beginning,
In
the middle, or In the end, point to such a narrative liberation
though, when read in order, can also refer to a time-, or lifeline.

The
artist’s
internal and well as external withdrawal from distinct authorship can
either be understood as a form of visual and spatial anarchy or, more
likely, a form of enablement. It is as if Jaray has given us the
greatest gift of them all. The empowerment to view and engage with
these works as if to say: make your own decision, craft your own
story out of the 17 individual atoms.

With
°°—°°
Jaray
reduced her painterly language to its core. Jaray’s
gift, after 65 years of painting, is a joyful and a generous one.