Jonas Wood
17 Feb - 26 Mar 2011
© Jonas Wood
The Hypnotist, 2011
Oil and acrylic on canvas
108 x 168 inches
Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, New York
The Hypnotist, 2011
Oil and acrylic on canvas
108 x 168 inches
Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, New York
JONAS WOOD
17 February – 26 March, 2011
February 3, 2011, New York—Jonas Wood’s third solo show at Anton Kern Gallery takes an assertive step forward into the pictorial and psychological-emotional investigation of interior spaces, gently leaving behind the Calder-like vibrant flower still lifes recently shown at the Hammer Museum. Los Angeles-based Wood has put together a body of paintings and drawings that confronts the viewer with formal rigor and emotional intensity combined with a strong dosage of contemporaneity, thrill and pleasure.
While the gouache and color-pencil drawings, mostly of family members, interiors, and the occasional sports figure, touch on a variety of subjects and genres, they form the foundation for paintings that concentrate on intricately constructed interior spaces. Wood plays with the notion of genre and its supposed traditionalism and makes it the stage for an un-ironic infusion of sentiment and memories that goes beyond any classical restraint. He has formulated a vocabulary of emotions that become manifest in his domestic objects, furnishings, plants, posters, even pets, and also in locales that are charged with biographical significance, including former places of exhibition.
The presentation of the drawings sheds light onto Wood’s studio practice. The artist works from life, from photo collages and found images. Preparatory sketches and collages build the basis for the drawings’ and paintings’ compositions and spatial layouts. Finally, Wood applies the perspectival tilt and distorted viewpoint that so clearly define his works.
But the paintings’ tilt, blocky flatness, and compositional autonomy would be mere formal experiments were they not charged with psychological acumen and emotional intensity. This is where the artist’s chosen objects and locations, and especially the images within the image, such as photographic snap shots, posters of all kind, postcards, sketches and notes start to speak in a loud and clear voice introducing a dense layer of story telling. After dissecting the visible world, Wood reassembles it into a cosmology of experiences, feelings, memories, and stories.
A painting such as “The Hypnotist” exemplifies Wood’s narrative potential most clearly. It not only confronts the viewer with a complexly constructed, disorienting space inhabited by two figures, the faith healer and the artist, but it turns the entire scene into a creepy psycho thriller with the healer’s stare violently pushing the artist against the margin of the painting, while the hypnotist’s framed posters and memorabilia pop out at the viewer like an out-of-body super-sonic film strip.
Jonas Wood was born in Boston and received his MFA from the University of Washington. His work has been shown in numerous galleries in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, and most recently in a solo exhibition at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, as well as a group show entitled “Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports” at the Wexner Center for the Arts (both 2010). Wood lives and works in Los Angeles.
17 February – 26 March, 2011
February 3, 2011, New York—Jonas Wood’s third solo show at Anton Kern Gallery takes an assertive step forward into the pictorial and psychological-emotional investigation of interior spaces, gently leaving behind the Calder-like vibrant flower still lifes recently shown at the Hammer Museum. Los Angeles-based Wood has put together a body of paintings and drawings that confronts the viewer with formal rigor and emotional intensity combined with a strong dosage of contemporaneity, thrill and pleasure.
While the gouache and color-pencil drawings, mostly of family members, interiors, and the occasional sports figure, touch on a variety of subjects and genres, they form the foundation for paintings that concentrate on intricately constructed interior spaces. Wood plays with the notion of genre and its supposed traditionalism and makes it the stage for an un-ironic infusion of sentiment and memories that goes beyond any classical restraint. He has formulated a vocabulary of emotions that become manifest in his domestic objects, furnishings, plants, posters, even pets, and also in locales that are charged with biographical significance, including former places of exhibition.
The presentation of the drawings sheds light onto Wood’s studio practice. The artist works from life, from photo collages and found images. Preparatory sketches and collages build the basis for the drawings’ and paintings’ compositions and spatial layouts. Finally, Wood applies the perspectival tilt and distorted viewpoint that so clearly define his works.
But the paintings’ tilt, blocky flatness, and compositional autonomy would be mere formal experiments were they not charged with psychological acumen and emotional intensity. This is where the artist’s chosen objects and locations, and especially the images within the image, such as photographic snap shots, posters of all kind, postcards, sketches and notes start to speak in a loud and clear voice introducing a dense layer of story telling. After dissecting the visible world, Wood reassembles it into a cosmology of experiences, feelings, memories, and stories.
A painting such as “The Hypnotist” exemplifies Wood’s narrative potential most clearly. It not only confronts the viewer with a complexly constructed, disorienting space inhabited by two figures, the faith healer and the artist, but it turns the entire scene into a creepy psycho thriller with the healer’s stare violently pushing the artist against the margin of the painting, while the hypnotist’s framed posters and memorabilia pop out at the viewer like an out-of-body super-sonic film strip.
Jonas Wood was born in Boston and received his MFA from the University of Washington. His work has been shown in numerous galleries in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, and most recently in a solo exhibition at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, as well as a group show entitled “Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports” at the Wexner Center for the Arts (both 2010). Wood lives and works in Los Angeles.