Bain de Soleil

In the summer of 2015, prolonged daily surf sessions prompted a need to give voice to an intuitive, experiential dimension of my artistic practice. Ocean water is remarkably close to the density of blood plasma. After hours in the sea, the body feels released from gravity, as though merging with the ion-rich air and the pull of the sun, newly open to direct interaction with the elements. A daily practice emerged from this experience: pouring and floating cascades of pure bleach, or bleach mixed with ocean water, down substrates of locally sourced board and paper, creating a live register of the physical moment while preserving traces of the ions and sunlight unique to that particular time and place. Bleach opens the substrate to the penetration of light and air, allowing deep, photosensitive imagery to develop. The pouring hand becomes a divining rod, attuned to the elements and conditions of the site.

This outdoor practice began in Montauk and has since continued at what I think of as oceanic and riparian convergence sites: Los Angeles; Olongapo, Philippines; Canggu, Indonesia; Byron Bay, Australia; the North Shore of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi; and alongside a mountain creek outside Woodstock, New York. Some works incorporate local flora and detritus, affixed as diaristic indices of place. In Hawaiʻi, the imagery evolved toward the primordial forms of root systems, coral, and lava. The Woodstock pours assumed the character of banners or tie-dye, each bearing a specific environmental history.

The pours created during my brief residency for Cheremoya's inaugural exhibition in Santa Fe mark a new engagement with the expansive qualities of this landscape. They extend this practice into guided, free-range compositions drawn equally to the openness of the high desert and to the countervailing pull of local streambeds. New Mexico is home to a deep tradition of artists who have pursued forms of environmental registration, from Walter De Maria's The Lightning Field and Charles Ross's Star Axis to Betty Hahn's non-silver bichromate and gum prints, making it a fitting place against which to test and extend this way of making.

The New Mexico works opened into several new registers beyond the pours. Found sheets of metal, gathered locally and already marked with bullet holes, suggest gradients of velocity and authorship; their worn elliptical forms constitute vernacular readymades, all the while reciphering de Saint Phalle and Fontana. The pours also assume a new sculptural form, suspended between panes of glass supported by vinyl and concrete. Their chemical cascades are fixed within a shallow architectural space that emphasizes gravity and sedimentation while drawing upon the material vocabularies of Arte Povera and post-Minimalism within a wider field of process-based and archival practice. Their flows of sodium hypochlorite are steeped in the languages of painterly gestures, though replacing explicit subjectivity with the sun as their primary author.

A final body of work inverts the process: Bain de Soleil sun lotion, that St.-Tropez beach bag staple from the time of Pop Art’s ascendancy, painted onto black railroad paper in austere vertical bands, adopts a chemistry meant to inhibit sun exposure as its formal agent. The iconic wellness product connects with my broader work on longevity, while also acknowledging the long history, and perhaps increasing age, of gestural abstraction itself. A diffuser atomizes the scent of the sunblock throughout the space, an atmospheric inscription that leaves no mark at all.

Collectively, these series elaborate a broader practice that explores the body through a materialist lineage of biomedical aspiration and social care. Both reflect a sustained interest in corporeal self-expression and therapeutic modalities, whether enacted through physical intervention or through forms of exchange with the more-than-human world.
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Jo Shane
Santa Fe, New Mexico
2026
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Jo Shane (b. 1955 in Boston, MA) lives and works in New York. In 1975 she completed The Whitney Independent Studies program. Shane also studied at Carnegie Mellon University and holds a BFA from Pratt Institute. Formerly she was on faculty at The School of Visual Arts (1989-2013). Select exhibitions include Cheremoya (2026),Santa Fe, NM; Blade Study (2025) New York, NY; White Columns (1980, 1982, 2025) New York, NY; TW Fine Art (2022, 2023) Palm Beach, FL; Johannes Vogt (2019) New York, NY; Gallery Kendra Jayne Patrick (2019, 2020) New York, NY; Franklin Parrasch Gallery (2014) New York, NY; Barbara Gladstone Gallery (1981) New York, NY; Artists Space (1989) New York, NY; Hall Bromm (1987) New York, NY; MoMA PS1 (1980) Queens, NY; Grey Gallery (1991) New York, NY; Musee D’Art Contemporain (1991) Montreal, QC; and The Istanbul Museum of Contemporary Art (2009) Istanbul, TR, among many others. She has appeared in the films Minus Zero (1979), Downtown 81 (2000), and Underground U.S.A. (1980). Her work has been the subject of extensive review in publications including Artforum, ArtNews, ArtReview, Bomb Magazine, and The New York Times.