​Curatorial Statement by Liz Chilsen:

 

Jeanette Andrews works as both a practicing magician and a contemporary artist whose medium is magic itself. Its methods, structures, and underlying operations form the foundation of her artistic inquiry.

 

Andrews’s work engages deeply with ideas of curiosity, belief, consciousness, and the human capacity for surprise. Through immersive and interactive works, she examines the mechanisms of magic and the ways they intertwine with human experience.

 

On Wonder, Mind and Magic presents nine major works spanning eight years of Andrews’s career. For this exhibition—her first solo museum presentation—she has created new site-specific works including a monumental chalkboard mural, and an immersive exploration of visual perception itself.

 

Tracing Andrews’s practice over time reveals an artist persistently engaging with essential questions of contemporary life. She was an early explorer of machine learning; she investigates impossibility, deception, and systems of belief; and more recently, the fragile mechanics of trust and perception.

 

At its core, magic unsettles our assumptions about how reality operates. Andrews frequently employs familiar gestures associated with honesty and transparency, rolled sleeves or empty hands for example, only to undermine the certainty they appear to establish through impossible events.

 

Her work asks why some challenges to our beliefs produce delight while others provoke fear, suspicion, or anger. In an era increasingly shaped by polarization, misinformation, and competing realities, these questions feel especially urgent.