JONAS WOOD
Gagosian is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Jonas Wood.
October 7 – November 23, 2024
Wood’s compositions are characterized by sudden disjunctures, the collision of contrasting graphic passages, and sly shifts of scale and perspective, all within a compressed picture plane. These qualities grow out of his elaborate studio process: the artist works from photographs that he frequently alters and collages by hand, which, in turn, form the basis for preparatory drawings from which the paintings derive. Through these stages, he transforms volumes, surfaces, and textures into dense blocks of pattern and vibrant color.
The works emphasize their own composite nature and pictorial plasticity, with sometimesdestabilizing effects from clashing compositional elements. Japanese Garden with Temple (all works 2024), a depiction of a garden in Kyoto, hovers between chaos and order, between excess and economy, as a cacophony of flora and foliage finds an off-kilter sense of balance. In Self-Portrait with Home Depot Cart, Joint, and Phone, which draws on several photographic sources, the figure of the artist—rendered at miniature scale—practically disappears amid the brickwork and camouflage mural on the building behind him and the cluster of houseplants in front, yet he remains the thematic and compositional heart of the painting.
As is often true in Wood’s work, the imagery in the exhibition is encoded with personal significance, each painting corresponding to a key element or moment from the artist’s life. While these meanings are not necessarily available to the viewer, a distinctive sense of intimacy pervades much of this body of work. One recognizes it, for example, in the occurrence of domestic interiors: 10 Pigeon Hill Road, which depicts Wood’s childhood home, spatially reimagined, a family portrait hanging on the wall; and Robot and Bear, which features the artist’s dogs (past and present) transported into an apartment from the pages of an interior design magazine, looking out over Los Angeles.
Other works on view represent family through their creations rather than as themselves: Wall of Fame portrays a wall from Wood’s studio crowded with his children’s art; Shio Shrine imagines a compact staging of work Kusaka made over the course of two decades; and Still Life with Coffee and Minibook features paintings by the children as well as a book of Kusaka’s art, arranged among potted plants and a cup of coffee. These works entail a deft intermixing of subject and object, making and staging, art and life.