JIM SHAW
Paris
5 March – 9 April 2005
The image of an effervescent universe, contained with great difficulty within limits, could also serve as a metaphor for Jim Shaw whose works are, in some way, the transcription of murky, oneiric depths, rich in images of a teeming America with dreams and nightmares.
(Jim Shaw’s retrospective catalog - MAMCO/Casino)
In his show, the uncategorizable L.A. artist, Jim Shaw presents some works from different series. Banners painted on theatrical backdrops, kind of political cartoons with a Christian iconography. They are a reflexion on today’s America, where the politics are intertwined with a fundamentalist Christian ideology, which he mixed with a nostalgic meditation on a progressionist vision from the 30’s, a lost America.
Shaw keeps going on with his critical and hallucinatory investigation into the American culture and values, through the use of large drawings and “ripped up face paintings” which are semi-formalist extrapolations of the Oist series (enormous creative undertaking for cataloging the various forms of O-ism’s visual legacy, - American cultural/religious tradition that Jim Shaw invented).
Other smaller pieces come from the “Dream object” series, object which come from the “dream drawings”, primary source of his night time inspiration.
