Jim Shaw

Jim Shaw's exhibition of new work will open at Metro Pictures on February 27th. Shaw exhibits "dream objects" (paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs) as part of an ongoing series culled from artworks that appear in his dreams. Since 1987 Jim Shaw has documented his dreams in detailed pencil drawings. Many of these works are reproduced in the book, Dreams (Smart Art Press, 1995).

The exhibition includes dioramas of miniature landscapes — foreboding tableaus of lilliputian other-worlds that depict mummified scenes of corpses suspended from the branches of a bonsai tree and a beachside resort that seems ominously vacated. Also exhibited are paintings inspired by covers of paperback novels. These wordless paintings, which allude to his lurid non art oriented dreams, capture Shaw's obsession with the most bizarre aspects of popular culture.

Shaw's earlier extended series of paintings and drawings (1985-1991) "My Mirage" was a coming-of-age tale as told by the artist's alter-ego "Billy," an "everykid" born circa 1950. This series of small-scale works (exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1991) present an imaginary version of an adolescence of psychedelia, politics and pop-culture in the 1960s and 70s.

This is Jim Shaw's fourth solo exhibition with Metro Pictures. He has exhibited regularly in Los Angeles, most recently at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, and has been represented in major shows of Los Angeles artists such as "Performance Anxiety" at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and "Sunshine and Noir" that originated at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark and traveled throughout Europe. His work was included in the 1991 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. A catalog of Shaw's popular exhibition Thrift Store Paintings (Heavy Industry Publications, 1990) has been reissued. A full retrospective of Shaw's work is scheduled for this May at Casino Luxembourg and in Geneva at MAMCO. Shaw attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the California Institute of the Arts and currently lives in Los Angeles.

For further information please contact Jeff Gauntt or Samantha Christie at Metro Pictures.