Sun Ship (J.C.)

Sun Ship (J.C.) is a composition that exemplifies the extreme complexity achieved by Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu in her use of techniques and processes involving acrylic paint and ink. The use of airbrush, stencil, digital image manipulation, and the brush-applied swarm of calligraphic details lend the canvas a strong sense of directionality and energy. 

Since the mid-2010s, Mehretu’s process for each painting has followed an operational method she gradually developed: she selects a press photograph, retouches and crops it to the point where it becomes unreadable and unrecognizable. It is then printed or transferred onto the canvas via airbrush. She has said, “In these blurs, I felt apparitions—ghosts of the moment represented in the photograph. I’m fascinated by blur, by the loss of focus, by what remains of these images.” The vivid, shimmering palette creates an expanding landscape that seems to overflow the canvas’s edges, and the large scale of the painting enhances a sense of disorientation. Abstraction in Julie Mehretu’s work is deeply tied to her desire to make the canvas a field of possibilities—a space of “visual neologisms” where she reuses and remixes a set of historical graphic signs, compelling the viewer to explore the canvas at length, with effects that remain unpredictable.