Installation
Jim Shaw
February 15–March 26, 2022
Gagosian, Beverly Hills
In anticipation of his first solo exhibition at the gallery in 2023, Gagosian, Beverly Hills, is pleased to present a selection of works by Jim Shaw, who joined the gallery in 2021.
Over the past thirty years, Shaw has built connections between his own psyche and America’s larger political, social, and spiritual histories, finding inspiration in comic books, pulp novels, rock albums, protest posters, and thrift store paintings. Blending the personal, the commonplace, and the uncanny, Shaw’s works frequently place images of friends and family in dialogue with world events, pop culture, and alternate realities, often unfolding in extended narrative cycles. His ongoing project Oism, begun in the late 1990s, is an artistic attempt to maintain a functioning religion, complete with its own symbols and traditions.
Among the wide sampling of works on view in Beverly Hills are entries in Shaw’s series Dream Drawings (1992–99), which presents uncanny scenes derived from the artist’s own dream life, and Dream Objects (1994–), which manifests selected items from these nocturnal visions as bizarre, cartoonlike sculptures. Examples of the latter here include Hair House (2013), in which a small model dwelling is held aloft by long brown tresses, and Nose Sculpture Wall Sconce (Latino) (2007), a giant schnoz with light pouring from its flared nostrils. Among the paintings on view are Haunted House (2016), in which a tall building emits a speech bubble filled with rows of the repeated exclamation BOO!, and A Good Republican Cloth Coat (2019), which places a leering Richard Nixon in the equally unsettling company of a circus clown.
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Jim Shaw, Family Stories, 2019 © Jim Shaw
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Screening and Talk
Jim Shaw’s Monsters
Sunday, July 23, 2023, 2–9pm
Brain Dead Studios, Los Angeles
studios.wearebraindead.com
In collaboration with Kaleidoscope, Jim Shaw has curated a film program titled Monsters to celebrate his cover story in the spring/summer 2023 issue of the magazine. Held at Brain Dead Studios—an experiential space hosted in a former silent movie theater—this spine-chilling program stems directly from the artist’s childhood memories, featuring three horror movies that embrace the surreal, the sci-fi, and the supernatural. To kick off the screenings, Shaw will be in conversation with Gagosian director Jessica Beck to discuss his recent paintings, which reanimate mythological themes through incidents from political history and popular entertainment. The works were shown at Gagosian, Beverly Hills, and will be documented in an exhibition catalogue featuring an essay by Beck to be published in August 2023. The event is free to attend.
2pm: Jim Shaw in conversation with Jessica Beck
3pm: The Electronic Monster (1958), directed by Montgomery Tully
5pm: The Mask (1961), directed by Julian Roffman
7pm: 13 Ghosts (1960), directed by William Castle
Jim Shaw. Photo: Max Farago
Artist Spotlight
Jim Shaw
November 16–22, 2022
Since the 1970s, Jim Shaw has responded to American cultural history through painting, drawing, and sculpture. He draws from sources as wide-ranging as comic books, pulp novels, rock albums, protest posters, and amateur paintings. Often unfolding in extended narrative cycles, Shaw’s works juxtapose images of friends and family with those depicting world events, pop-cultural phenomena, and alternative realities, blending the personal, the commonplace, and the visionary.
Photo: LeeAnn Nickel
Screening
Jim Shaw Selects
October 12–27, 2021
Metrograph, New York
metrograph.com
Jim Shaw is presenting a selection of conspiracy-minded cinema at Metrograph in New York, inaugurating a new artist-programmer-in-residence series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph in the theater and online. Jim Shaw Selects will feature six films that kept the artist uneasy company during the paranoiac pandemic time. To attend a screening, purchase tickets at metrograph.com.
Still from They Live (1988), directed by John Carpenter
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