Jim Hodges, Arranged, 1996, Folded book with metal paper clips, 33 x 16.5 x 26 cm, Heidi L. Steiger.

Jim Hodges, Study for Blue IV, 2009, Courtesy the artist, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and Gladstone Gallery, New York, © the artist.

Jim Hodges, A Diary of Flowers in Love, 1996, ink on paper napkins, pins, T.B. Walker, Acquisition Fund, 2011.

Camden Arts Centre
Arkwright Road
+ 44 (0)20 7472 5500
London
Gallery3
Jim Hodges
June 11, 2010-September 5, 2010

Since the late 1980s American artist Jim Hodges has been producing fragile and intimate works which focus on themes of love, loss, beauty and sexuality. This exhibition brings together a significant collection of drawings, paintings and small sculptural pieces, intricately crafted from a wide variety of materials, both commonplace and precious, including shattered mirrors, paper napkins, artificial flowers and gold leaf.

Hodges has selected works, in part, as a response to an exhibition held in the same space by his friend Felix Gonzales-Torres in 1994, including a large wall painting reconfigured specifically for the space, Oh Great Terrain (2002). Based upon a camouflage pattern, commonly found in nature, the work is part of his ongoing preoccupation with things in the natural world such as flowers, spider’s webs, trees as well as the human body; symbols of which constantly re-emerge in both his drawings and sculptures.

Poetry and text also appear within Hodges’ work and he has cited Jean Genet’s writing as making a strong impression on him — in particular Genet’s use of flower imagery and his descriptions of the colour blue in Our Lady of the Flowers. The poetic expression in all Hodges’ work invites an intimacy with the viewer and although personal they relate to the universal relevance of emotional experiences such as sadness, joy or grief.

Jim Hodges (born 1957) is a New York-based installation artist.

Hodges was born in Spokane, Washington. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Fort Wright College in 1980 and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Pratt Institute in 1986. His piece Don't Be Afraid was installed on the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. in 2005. His most recent large-scale sculpture, look and see (a nine-ton stainless steel abstraction of camouflage) was purchased by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York in 2007.

Jim Hodges is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

Jim Hodges, Untitled, 2011, Installation view, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, November 2011.

Jim Hodges, No More Dreams/ In Real Time, 1994, Charcoal and white brass chain on paper, 107.3 x 76.8 cm, Collection particulière, New York, Courtesy CRG Gallery, New York.

Jim Hodges, Changing things [detail], 1997, Silk, plastic, wire and pins (342 parts), 193 x 376 cm, Dallas Museum of Art, Mary Margaret Munson Wilcox Fund and gift of Catherine and Will Rose, Howard Rachofsky, Christopher Drew and Alexandra May, and Martin Posner and Robyn Menter-Posner, © martabuso / Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, From the exhibition Love, eccetera, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, 5 February-5 April 2010, Piazza San Marco Gallery, Venezia.

Jim Hodges, and still this, 2005-2008. 23.5K and 24K gold with Beva on gessoed linen in 10 parts.

Jim Hodges, don't be afraid, 2004-2005 Inkjet on vinyl, dimensions variable; 35 x 75 feet as installed at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, August 2005, Gift of the artist, 2005, Accession Number: 05.11.

Jim Hodges, Oh Great Terrain, 2007, Mural from I Remember Heaven: Jim Hodges and Andy Warhol at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 2007.

Jim Hodges, end of time, 2008, installation view, Stephen Friedman Gallery, May 31-July 19, 2008.

Stephen Friedman Gallery
25-28 Old Burlington Street
+ 44 (0) 20 7494 1434
London
Jim Hodges
May 31-July 19, 2008

Hodges uses a wide range of media to create complex and poetic works layered with meaning. Exploring universal themes such as life, death, nature, beauty and the passing of time, his work can be seen as a coming to terms with life and his own sense of self. Interlaced with deeply personal references yet communal in spirit, this form of self-portraiture evades the direct gaze of the viewer and invites many other readings.

In this exhibition Hodges works with camouflage print, a material he has used frequently in the past. Four works, each entitled end of time, are a conclusion of his investigation and play with this motif. Here, the four colours of the urban camouflage design have been cut out, regrouped according to colour and stitched together to create monochromatic fabric "paintings." This instantly recognizable pattern, a representation of nature used in warfare and hunting, has been transformed. Dismantled and reorganized, new visions of nature derived from the graphic pattern unfold. These sublime, densely layered landscapes suggest nature in its most abstract form, devoid of reality.

Hodges’ fascination with nature is also evident in a new glass sculpture, ghost, produced with master glass fabricator, David Willis. As in Dürer’s famous drawing, The Great Piece of Turf’ (1503), nature has been meticulously depicted: flowers, twigs, insects, moss and decaying foliage are exquisitely rendered in hand-blown clear and coloured glass and contained within a large glass bell jar. Evoking objet d’arts and vitrines from the past which display scenes from natural history, this fragile material, pushed to its limit, holds life delicately in suspended animation. In this heightened state of distillation, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, revealing glimpses of multiple realities. Yet, free from sentiment, this tableau, with all the redolent symbolism of its individual parts, also reflects upon notions of pleasure and loss, beauty and the transience of life.

In 2009, Hodges’ solo exhibition opens at Centre Pompidou, Paris and tours to Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, and Camden Arts Centre, London. Recent solo exhibitions include CRG Gallery, New York (2008); Look and See, Creative Time Commission at Ritz Carlton Plaza, Battery Park, New York, (2005); Jim Hodges: This line to you, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea (CGAC), Santiago de Compostello, Spain (2004); Recent group exhibitions include I Remember Heaven: Jim Hodges and Andy Warhol, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2007), Like Colour in Pictures, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2007), and Universal Experience: Art, Life and the Tourist’s Eye, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Jim Hodges, The end from where you are, 1998, Silk, cotton, polyester, and thread, 16 x 16'.

Jim Hodges, the dark gate (detail), 2008, Wood, steel, electric light, and perfume, 96 x 96 x 96".