Ben Jones
03 Nov 2012 - 24 Feb 2013
BEN JONES
The Video
3 November 2012 – 24 February 2013
The Museum of Contemporary Art presents Ben Jones: The Video, the West Coast solo museum debut of the artistʼs work, on view at MOCA Pacific Design Center from November 3, 2012, through February 24, 2012. The exhibition features new videos and paintings that build upon the artist’s previous work using the extracted and abstracted forms of technology and pop symbols of our time to create irreverent, surrealistic, and introspective narratives and environments, often defined by their kaleidoscopic arrays of day-glo colors. With a fluid sense of material, Jones has worked with traditional art media like painting, drawing and sculpture, but also animated music videos, produced zines and costumes, furniture and web art, cartoons and music.
In addition to his visual art practice, Jones currently produces animated shows, helping to rewrite a modern vocabulary of new shapes, colors and ideas from a visual language that as a child he was obsessed with. Emerging from his television projects comes a new body of work that takes these forms and reexamines them through formal and abstract exercises. Jones has long dealt with the permeability between the space on the page/screen and three-dimensional space, making otherworldly comic interiors real and employing optical illusions in two-dimensions to play with our sense of depth perception.
In Jones’ work, ethereal geometries and celebratory colors come together in stripped test patterns and blocky isometric illusions. His work locates itself in the earliest moments of seemingly obsolescent digital animation, partly as self-conscious nostalgia but more truly to expand the unrealized potential of this artistic medium.
Ben Jones was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1977 and lives and works in Los Angeles. He holds a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. A founding member of the artist collective Paper Rad (with Jessica Ciocci and Jacob Ciocci), Jones selected exhibitions and screenings include: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (solo), Loyal Gallery, Malmö (solo) Foxy Productions, New York (solo); Andreas Melas Presents, Athens (solo); Peres Projects, Berlin; Pace Wildenstein, New York; CANADA, New York; Green on Red Gallery, Dublin; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Tate Britain, London; Musee d' Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC, Paris; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and The Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool. In addition to his publications and exhibitions, Jones is the main creator and the voice actor of Alfe and Roba in the Cartoon Network show, The Problem Solverz.
The Video
3 November 2012 – 24 February 2013
The Museum of Contemporary Art presents Ben Jones: The Video, the West Coast solo museum debut of the artistʼs work, on view at MOCA Pacific Design Center from November 3, 2012, through February 24, 2012. The exhibition features new videos and paintings that build upon the artist’s previous work using the extracted and abstracted forms of technology and pop symbols of our time to create irreverent, surrealistic, and introspective narratives and environments, often defined by their kaleidoscopic arrays of day-glo colors. With a fluid sense of material, Jones has worked with traditional art media like painting, drawing and sculpture, but also animated music videos, produced zines and costumes, furniture and web art, cartoons and music.
In addition to his visual art practice, Jones currently produces animated shows, helping to rewrite a modern vocabulary of new shapes, colors and ideas from a visual language that as a child he was obsessed with. Emerging from his television projects comes a new body of work that takes these forms and reexamines them through formal and abstract exercises. Jones has long dealt with the permeability between the space on the page/screen and three-dimensional space, making otherworldly comic interiors real and employing optical illusions in two-dimensions to play with our sense of depth perception.
In Jones’ work, ethereal geometries and celebratory colors come together in stripped test patterns and blocky isometric illusions. His work locates itself in the earliest moments of seemingly obsolescent digital animation, partly as self-conscious nostalgia but more truly to expand the unrealized potential of this artistic medium.
Ben Jones was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1977 and lives and works in Los Angeles. He holds a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. A founding member of the artist collective Paper Rad (with Jessica Ciocci and Jacob Ciocci), Jones selected exhibitions and screenings include: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (solo), Loyal Gallery, Malmö (solo) Foxy Productions, New York (solo); Andreas Melas Presents, Athens (solo); Peres Projects, Berlin; Pace Wildenstein, New York; CANADA, New York; Green on Red Gallery, Dublin; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Tate Britain, London; Musee d' Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC, Paris; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and The Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool. In addition to his publications and exhibitions, Jones is the main creator and the voice actor of Alfe and Roba in the Cartoon Network show, The Problem Solverz.