JIM SHAW

Over the past thirty years, Jim Shaw has become one of the United States most influential artists, renowned for his imaginative, inventive and especially diverse practice, that encompasses different media from painting to sculpture. Jim Shaw’s creations are characterized by the artists’ idiosyncratic approach to the reality that surrounds him: each work synthesizes the vernacular and the exceptional, mysticism and realism, creating a visual aesthetic that challenges America’s puritan and radical underbelly. The artist infuses American cartoons with the pathos of archaic myths and eerie semi-religious energy. Shaw mines his imagery from the cultural refuse of the twentieth century, using comic books, record covers, conspiracy magazines, and obscure religious iconography to produce a portrait of the nation’s subconscious. His work is distinguished by rigorous formal and structural analyses of neglected forms of vernacular culture, informed by his large collections of objects representative of consumer desires, religious fervor, and a constantly evolving counterculture.

His work has been featured in the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); and the 1991 and 2002 Whitney Biennials in New York. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland; Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Art Museum, New York; Whitney Museum, New York, among others.

Courtesy MASSIMODECARLO