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Jim Hodges

Dates
02.05.2023 | 13.05.2023
Gallery
Pièce Unique
File
PRESS RELEASE

MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique is very pleased to present the work of Jim Hodges.

Walking past the gallery window during the first week of his presentation, one might mistake the space as hauntingly empty. Yet upon closer inspection, Jim Hodges’ and, 2022 reveals its graceful, ghostly presence in the far-left corner of the room. A gold-plated brass chain spiderweb, this sublimely discreet-as-it-is-elegant artwork embodies some of the paradoxes that have long animated Jim Hodges’ practice.

Embracing the contradictory poetry of spiderwebs, which have the power to appear overnight, unwanted and unexpected in between corners or objects, Hodges reveals, even celebrates the grace and complexity of nature, which operates in codes wonderfully alien to the human mind, connecting things and spaces splendidly senselessly between them.

The extreme fragility of the spiderweb - which in fact functions as a deadly trap to its preys, is reproduced and amplified in precious metals, creating an illusion of weightlessness whilst amplifying the web’s very intrusion in the space. By adorning an otherwise disregarded part of the room, Hodges not only makes context an integral element of the work itself, he also invites to rediscover the otherwise overlooked elements of our daily lives.

Similarly, yet with a completely different outcome, the artwork presented at Pièce Unique during the second week (May 9 – 13), A possible flower, 2023 is thoroughly concerned with its interaction with space. Flowers have often been the subject of Jim Hodges work. Born from his desire to paint a bouquet, A possible flower reduces the flower to its very essence, ending up in the form of 27 brightly colored pure color planes in variously sized, thin linen canvases painted on their surface and all four sides. Reminiscent of the artist’s late friend and artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who’s works were often entitled “possibles”, Hodges displays his panels in a spontaneous, intuitive interplay of color and proportions – creating both opposition and complementarity among their sizes, color, and color reflected on the wall. Like a flower bouquet arranged loosely, casually, separated, divided, Hodges explains that he originally made these to place them in his own home, for him to live among.

“I imagined installing them throughout my house, locating them along the pathways that I meander during my days. Thinking they might offer instances, a pause, a relationship of color and associations while acting like stations along a progression with no destination.”

MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique presents two works by Jim Hodges: and, a work from 2022, followed by A possible flower, 2023.

The Artist

Jim Hodges

Jim Hodges

2018 Jim in Ireland by Tim Hailand highres