JIM HODGES turning pages in the book of love
Upon entering the exhibition, the viewer encounters a subtle atmosphere of light and shadows. A room within a room hosts a cabinet made of wood and its multiple skins of lacquer, gold, and silk, housing an object made of light and glass. In the second room a sculpture of two interlaced arms made in white Michelangelo marble lay upon a rock made of black Colonnata marble as they hold a rose made of gold. Behind the marble sculpture is a large scale diptych, that is part of one of Jim Hodges’ new series of paintings created with glitter and other mediums, evokes the artist’s interest in the process of creating through gesture and immediacy. In the 18th century antique library reading room of Palazzo Belgioioso, the viewer encounters a precious object held by two intertwined hands – solemn and charmed, immersed in a red velvet tent. In the garden of the palazzo, used for an exhibition for the first time, the artist has positioned a transformed root of a giant redwood into a deconstructed gilded bronze sculpture.
Since the late 1980’s Jim Hodges has employed a broad range of everyday and precious materials to create works that transform the quotidian object into a site where the personal, political, and universal merge through simple gesture and poetic command. Taking up varied modes of process and production, Hodges’ practice resists the definitional aims of discourse, instead offering multilayered works that evoke resonant themes such as identity and mortality. Glitter, bronze, fabric, gold, marble, glass and other materials have become part of the construction of a narrative on fragility, ephemerality, love and loss.
JIM HODGES
Jim Hodges was born in Spokane, Washington, USA in 1957. He lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include: tracing the contours of our days, Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO (2017); I dreamed a world and called it Love, Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY (2016); With Liberty and Justice for All, The Moody Rooftop, The Contemporary Austin, Austin, Texas, USA (2016); With Liberty and Justice For All (A Work in Progress), Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, USA (2015/2014); Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Take, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, USA (2014) and at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA (2014- 2015). Jim Hodges’s work is included in prestigious public collections such as: The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, USA; The Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., USA; Musée National, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, USA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; The Whitney Museum, New York, USA.
Massimo De Carlo, Milan
Piazza Belgioioso, 2 – 20121 Milan, Italy
From 29th of November 2017 until February 3rd 2018
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 11:00am – 7:00pm
© Images: Jim Hodges “turning pages in the book of love” Installation views Massimo De Carlo, Milan/Belgioioso, 2017 Ph. Roberto Marossi / Courtesy Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong
