Jim Shaw
Born in 1952, Midland, MI, US
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, US
M.F.A. California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, US
B.F.A. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, US
The practice of American artist Jim Shaw (b. 1952, Midland, Michigan) spans a wide range of artistic media and visual imagery. Since the 1970s, Shaw has mined the detritus of American culture, finding inspiration for his artworks in comic books, pulp novels, rock albums, protest posters, thrift store paintings – his ever-growing collection of found artworks has been the subject of its own exhibition on several occasions – and advertisements. At the same time, Shaw has consistently turned to his own life and, in particular, his unconscious, as a source of artistic creativity. Providing a blend of the personal, the commonplace and the uncanny, Shaw’s works frequently place in dialogue images of friends and family members with world events, pop culture and alternate realities. Often unfolding in long-term, narrative cycles, the works contains systems of cross-references and repetitions, which rework similar symbols and motifs, allowing a story-like thread to be perceived.
Originally from Michigan, Shaw was part of a group of young artists who redefined art in Los Angeles in the 1980s. His early work deployed a virtuoso drawing style to create mysterious, surreal portraits. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he produced his sprawling series My Mirage, which tells the story of an American boy growing up amid the tumult of the late twentieth century through an encyclopedic compendium of graphic styles. In the mid-1990s, Shaw began his iconic series Dream Drawings and Dream Objects, for which he used his own nighttime visions as the source for endless new images to produce when he awoke. In recent years, he has created a number of large-scale painted backdrops combining characters and narratives from throughout history to explore the roots of America's cultural, religious, and political identity.
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