Jim Houser
asobviousasaskull
Gallery II
Solo Exhibition
September 8, 2007
through October 6, 2007
NEW YORK, NY September 2007 – Jonathan LeVine Gallery is please to present asobviousasaskull, a solo exhibit of new works by Jim Houser. This is the artist’s second major solo show at the gallery and will feature an installation of paintings, sculptures, and a large-scale mural featuring a collection of painted wooden panels. For this exhibition, the artist will debut original composed music to create a visceral experience for the viewer.
For asobviousasaskull, Houser continues to translate an acute awareness of words and sensitivity to his surroundings through his art. Working in a style of free-association, Houser creates profound and uplifting poetry, which renders his art carefree and innocent. Houser’s fascination with word association parlays to a distinct aesthetic and mode of communication — a new visual language. Choosing words that interest him, either for their visual or aural properties, Houser is concerned with transcribing subjective elements through a basic vocabulary of images. Each work is related through theme, color, and text, forming a deep-coded composition, where the viewer activates a dialogue and participates in a seemingly complex narrative.
Structured compositions and harmonious color palette enhance the curious nature of meticulous and refined renderings in Houser’s paintings. Houser’s controlled line, flat color and sectioned narratives reveal a heightened precision, yet are distinctly handmade. Comprised of a system of ideas and methods, Houser’s work is a catalogue of his active observations and experiences transferred to multiple forms of tangible surfaces and objects, including painted sculptures on wood, clay and cast stone. These recognizable objects, removed from their everyday use and reworked into a playful narrative, adopt new meaning. The result is a body of work that is extremely personal and accessible, rich with iconography of word, phrase, and symbol fused seamlessly together to illustrate the human condition. “That’s how I wanted to present my work,” explains Houser, “in the context of the world that I occupy. All my influences are present there.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jim Houser lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. Recent exhibitions include, The Beating Heart Acts as a Time, Painted Bride Art Center, Philadelphia, PA, We’ll Make A Lover of You, ArtCenter of South Florida, Miami, FL, and systemsanderrors, Jonathan LeVine gallery, New York, NY. Houser's work is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Houser’s work has been published in Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Anthem, Flaunt, Modern Painters, Paper, Los Angeles Times, and Juxtapoz magazine He has created design work for Toy Machine, Designarium, and Nike. In 2005, Ginko Press published Babel, a book cataloging Jim Houser's life in the arts.
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