Jim Shaw seems to thrive on esoteric references and unlikely Juxtap positions. In the nineties he started his constant Dream drawings series and are Oisma Project, reflects his long interest in world construction. Of Drawings At Gagosian – a selection of meticulous black -white pencil drawings, plus two color works, dating from 2012 to 2025 – he continues to combine dreams, surrealism and anachrone iconography in a distinctive visual language. Spend some time with the works, and the sum becomes more topical than the parts.
For more than 30 years, the LA-based artist has articulated the intertwined demons of American politics and regular culture, starting with the white suburbs of the 1950s, and the deep-rooted madness in the heart of both.
In ‘Study For’ Dance, Girl, Dance (Lucille Ball) ” (2020) he presents viewers with an arresting portrait of an icon of the American comedy. While the drawing refers to the almost brutal attraction of Hollywood -glamour in our culture, Shaw adds a dream -like quality by covering a pattern of stains on the actress’s face. At the same time I love Lucy Star – points to a dark, enchanted side of the canonical pop culture.
Under a handful of drawings with Hollywood theme, “Study for” The Bridge “(2020) also sets up I love LucyDisplaying the main cast in a car (a nod to a cross-country episode) next to the sentences “The world’s greatest standard” and “There is no place like the American Way”, above the display of different loaves.
Shaw’s vision on (here, literally) White-Bread Americana penetrates his works. The foundation is the moment after the Second World War on which prosperity was represented by the capitalism promoted by film and television, and Witte Onderwijk from the middle class was set as ideal. Shaw’s criticisms are more disturbing and more effective because he explains the strangeness behind the facade. In “Study for” The Adding Machine “” (2023), a group of smiling faces appears around a typing woman as a vision from a pamphlet from the 1950s in a cluster of knotty trees. And in the surprisingly disturbing “crouching man with small figures” (2014), small clones seem to grow from a naked man who does an athletic piece.
Part of Shaw’s iconography may seem random in the beginning, but the more you connect the dots, the more the treacherous and ultimately catastrophic work of the US government, law enforcement and army come forward. A 2023 Grown Article refers to the city where Shaw was born and raised as a ‘small city in Michigan’, but Midland is also the home of Dow Chemical, the company that pioneered plastic and foam products and eventually the only supplier of Napalm and Agent Orange War. The man in “squatted man with small figures” can easily be a by -product of a chemical plant.
Other artists may speak more directly about the sociopolitical issues of today, but Shaw records the Maalstroom with creepy precision.
Jim Shaw: Drawings Continues in Gagosian (821 Park Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan) up to and including 14. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
