Before Language

Galerie Allen is pleased to present Before Language, an exhibition bringing together a group of paintings by Jacqueline de Jong produced between 1960 and 1964. These works belong to a formative moment in her practice, when painting appears to still be inventing its own grammar.

The title Before Language also points to a place where painting precedes naming: before forms become bodies, characters, or narratives, they exist as gestures, tensions, and still-open signs. Human and non-human forms coexist in a state of continuous transformation, suspended between tenderness, violence, humour, and hallucination.