Kim Jones
09 Sep - 08 Oct 2011
KIM JONES
‘Semper Fi’
9 September – 8 October, 2011
ANTWERP – Zeno X Gallery is very pleased to announce a solo show with American artist Kim Jones (°1944, San Bernardino, CA). For his third solo show at the gallery entitled ‘Semper Fi’, Jones will exhibit a selection of sculptures, works on paper and painted photographic works.
Kim Jones was born out of the 1970s performance art movement in Southern California, where he became widely known for his alter ego, Mudman. Caked in mud, bearing a lattice appendage of sticks attached to his back and wearing a headdress and nylon mask, this unsettling, itinerant figure appeared on city streets, beaches, in subways and in galleries. Connecting the abstract, formal investigations of process and material-based artists and the physicality of body-based performance, Mudman evolved from Jones’ early stick sculptures, tightly bound in what would become his signature materials of nylon, rope, electrical tape and foam rubber. Jones uses documentation of Mudman, as well as sculptures that result from performances and installations, to develop an idiom of forms and hybrid creatures that appear throughout his drawings.
On view at the gallery are works on paper, the so called war drawings in graphite, which involve ‘x’ and ‘o’ figures and erasure indicating movement of each force, painted photographic works, many which have been made over a period of thirty years, and sculptural works. A US Marine jacket – Jones served as a Marine in the Vietnam War – or small dolls are transformed in Mudman-like objects and covered with war drawings. The title of the exhibition ‘Semper Fi’ refers to the motto of the United States Marine Corps ‘Always Faithful’. According to the artist, the entire description of the show can be found in the following quotation:
“The story of the twenty-first century will be, in part, the story of the drawing and redrawing of...battle lines, the story of Homo Sapiens trying to stake claim on shifting ground, flanked on both sides by beast and machine, pinned between meat and math.”
Brian Christian, The Most Human Human
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Kim Jones’ work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Museum of
Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
His work will be on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in the exhibition ‘California in the Age of Pluralism 1974-1981’ as well as the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art in the exhibition ‘LA RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980’. His solo show ‘Kim Jones: A Retrospective’ which chronicled over thirty years of the artists’ work was on view at the State University of New York, Buffalo, the Luck Man Fine Arts Complex, California State University, Los Angeles and the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle in 2006-2008.
Significant recent group exhibitions include the 17th Sidney Biennial, ‘The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia’, Guggenheim Museum, New York and the 52nd Venice Biennial amongst many others.
“‘Force and fraud are, in times of war, the two cardinal virtues’ Hobbes wrote. In just such times, and we seem never to get beyond them – with the result that the artist’s larger themes are always current, indeed urgent, and never fade as the topical, no matter how searing, inevitably does – Jones’ art counters with authenticity and eccentric grace”
Robert Storr, Mudman: The Odyssey of Kim Jones, 2007
‘Semper Fi’
9 September – 8 October, 2011
ANTWERP – Zeno X Gallery is very pleased to announce a solo show with American artist Kim Jones (°1944, San Bernardino, CA). For his third solo show at the gallery entitled ‘Semper Fi’, Jones will exhibit a selection of sculptures, works on paper and painted photographic works.
Kim Jones was born out of the 1970s performance art movement in Southern California, where he became widely known for his alter ego, Mudman. Caked in mud, bearing a lattice appendage of sticks attached to his back and wearing a headdress and nylon mask, this unsettling, itinerant figure appeared on city streets, beaches, in subways and in galleries. Connecting the abstract, formal investigations of process and material-based artists and the physicality of body-based performance, Mudman evolved from Jones’ early stick sculptures, tightly bound in what would become his signature materials of nylon, rope, electrical tape and foam rubber. Jones uses documentation of Mudman, as well as sculptures that result from performances and installations, to develop an idiom of forms and hybrid creatures that appear throughout his drawings.
On view at the gallery are works on paper, the so called war drawings in graphite, which involve ‘x’ and ‘o’ figures and erasure indicating movement of each force, painted photographic works, many which have been made over a period of thirty years, and sculptural works. A US Marine jacket – Jones served as a Marine in the Vietnam War – or small dolls are transformed in Mudman-like objects and covered with war drawings. The title of the exhibition ‘Semper Fi’ refers to the motto of the United States Marine Corps ‘Always Faithful’. According to the artist, the entire description of the show can be found in the following quotation:
“The story of the twenty-first century will be, in part, the story of the drawing and redrawing of...battle lines, the story of Homo Sapiens trying to stake claim on shifting ground, flanked on both sides by beast and machine, pinned between meat and math.”
Brian Christian, The Most Human Human
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Kim Jones’ work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Museum of
Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
His work will be on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in the exhibition ‘California in the Age of Pluralism 1974-1981’ as well as the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art in the exhibition ‘LA RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980’. His solo show ‘Kim Jones: A Retrospective’ which chronicled over thirty years of the artists’ work was on view at the State University of New York, Buffalo, the Luck Man Fine Arts Complex, California State University, Los Angeles and the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle in 2006-2008.
Significant recent group exhibitions include the 17th Sidney Biennial, ‘The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia’, Guggenheim Museum, New York and the 52nd Venice Biennial amongst many others.
“‘Force and fraud are, in times of war, the two cardinal virtues’ Hobbes wrote. In just such times, and we seem never to get beyond them – with the result that the artist’s larger themes are always current, indeed urgent, and never fade as the topical, no matter how searing, inevitably does – Jones’ art counters with authenticity and eccentric grace”
Robert Storr, Mudman: The Odyssey of Kim Jones, 2007