Serpentine Gallery, London
Friendship, loss and the everyday populate Packer’s canvases, but they are full of disquieting detail
I’m drawn to the details in Jennifer Packer’s paintings. The woman whose legs are drawn up on to the chair, her red and white sneakers casually dangling. The pair of white stereo speakers on the floor nearby, with the tangle of white wires between them. The artist Eric Mack (one of several frequent models), his ankles revealing odd socks, carefully chosen. A portable typewriter on poet April Freely’s desk, with keys that look like rows of worn-down teeth (I think of a voice, clattering), a crocodile clip beside it, holding papers I can’t quite read. Freely sits, legs together, in a kind of yellowish haze. In another painting, the zipper of a leather jacket strewn on the sofa makes an arabesque of tiny white dots beside a pensive man whose downcast eyes stare at the floor or at something unseen. This incidental detail lightens the mood, gives you something else to look at beside the guy in the chair who evidently has things on his mind. His bulk and body language dwarf the chair, his stillness unnerving. Packer is very good at disquiet. Outwardly conventional – this is their disguise – the 36-year-old Black American’s oil-painted portraits, flower paintings and interiors creep up on you time and again.
