Ernestine is pleased to present, Without a Doubt, a solo exhibition by Janine Polak. This show pairs a series of detailed graphite drawings of undershirts and sweatshirts on gessoed panels, along with a grouping of glass cast sculptures. The subjects Polak chooses to work from are everyday worn garments, constructed to absorb and endure the wear and tear of everyday stress. In Polak’s show we see these items at rest and play, perhaps enjoying the care of the cleaning and folding process.

The items of clothing in Polak’s graphite drawings appear to be in midair as if they are being tossed around in a dryer, taken flight in the artist’s mind. They are dancing, fighting, or attempting flirtation with one another. There is a tension between the clothes’ quotidian nature and their delicate attentive renderings. The attention to fabric folds, intricately drawn with graphite hash marks and x’s, calls to mind the joys of folded rich fabrics in classical paintings and also of the marking of time: scratching off days, returning the viewer back to their workaday life. 

The glass casts of socks and fabric textures similarly delineate a delicate intricacy that contrasts with their hard surfaces. The glass is lightly tinted with bronzes, pinks, and blues - colors that suggest skin and air - a link with the drawings in the show. The high transparency of the glass allows the small sculptures to illuminate when hit with light. They are elevated by an auratic glow.

Polak’s aesthetic is clean but not minimal. The great amount of care shown to these objects contrasts the “just a number” feeling of their mass production as they are reclaimed through the artist’s careful hand. Just as a celebrity is nothing without their fans, the focus here is not fetishistic but more totemic - a redirecting away from the monumental to the labor that underpins it all.

Born in Nebraska and raised primarily in Virginia, Janine Polak received her BA in studio art and economics from the University of Virginia in 2005. In 2008, she earned her MFA in sculpture at the Yale University School of Art. Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S., including at Essex Flowers in New York, N.Y.; Brennan & Griffin, NYC; Scott Charmin in Houston, Texas; and Sardine in Brooklyn, N.Y.; and internationally in Beijing, China, Iceland, and Australia. She currently lives and works in Queens, N.Y.