Jered Sprecher - The Algorithm Will Not Mourn

FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY is pleased to announce the second solo exhibition of Knoxville-based artist Jered Sprecher entitled The Algorithm Will Not Mourn. The exhibition will be on view 11 February through 4 April 2026 with an opening reception on 7 March and a closing reception on 4 April, both from 5-8 PM as part of the Arts District New Orleans’ First Saturday Gallery Openings.

The exhibition surveys fifteen new and recent paintings in the artist’s ongoing exploration in perceptions of nature through the intervention of technological forces. The imagery grows from images of flowers, thick forests, sun-dappled foliage, and birds; evoking wonder and depicting natural beauty, complexity, and immensity. These images catalyze the paintings, as the artistic process evolves a matrix. Digital lenses, scanners, glowing screens, glossy plastics, degraded photographs, and gridded weaving patterns provide a reservoir of visual artifacts that are used to transform these images of nature. Sprecher filters and re-formats, echoing one’s daily experience mediated through technology. The underlying irregular grid creates a push and pull, as flowers and leaves emerge yet are pulled back into the flickering tangle, creating a discordant reality, a place of wonder and dread.

Sprecher expounds on this suite of paintings . . . 

Painting is a type of magic, a technology, that records our vision, allowing us to perceive, to dream dreams, and to say, “I was here and I witnessed this”.  Each picture is a love letter crafted in hope or despair. The flower blossoms and the flower wilts, and yet there remains a seed, another potential flash of color woven in kaleidoscopic grandeur. A gift to perceive and a gift to receive. The algorithm will not mourn, but the eye will.

These paintings inhabit the genre of nature morte and landscape, concentrating on what it might mean to depict an object (flower) or a setting. We have all had the impulse to take a photo of a sunset, fall colors on a tree, or a prismatic waterfall. We record these images out of an innate sense of beauty. When we wonder at the existence of the vista or nature before us, we reflexively wonder at our own existence. The sunset and the flower are a mirror showing us who we are and what can be. Painting searches for the sympathetic form ready for the eye’s haptic touch to reveal. We can love, and we can mourn, but the algorithm cannot.

Jered Sprecher lives and works in Knoxville, TN. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, UT Jefferson Prize, a Bailey Opportunity Grant, and a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship. Sprecher has been awarded residencies at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, Chinati Foundation, American Academy in Rome, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Sprecher has exhibited at The Drawing Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Des Moines Art Center, Hunter Museum, Asheville Art Museum, The Suburban, and Espai d’art Contemporani de Castelló. He has had solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York; Gallery 16, San Francisco; Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston; Atlanta Botanical Garden, Atlanta; Kinkead Contemporary, Los Angeles; Whitespace, Atlanta; and the Knoxville Museum of Art. He received his BA from Concordia University and his MA and MFA from the University of Iowa. Sprecher has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, and Cornell University. He joined the faculty at the University of Tennessee in 2005 and is a Professor of Painting & Drawing in the School of Art at the University of Tennessee. 

For more information, press or sales inquiries please contact Gallery Director Matthew Weldon Showman at 504.343.6827 or matthew@ferrarashowman.com. Please join the conversation with FSG on Instagram (@FerraraShowmanGallery) via the hashtags: #JeredSprecher, #FerraraShowmanGallery, and #ArtsDistrictNewOrleans.