Exhibition
Jim Hodges - Camden Arts Centre
Since the late eighties American artist Jim Hodges has been producing fragile and intimate works which focus on themes of love, loss, beauty and sexuality. This exhibition brings together a significant collection of drawings, paintings and small sculptural pieces, intricately crafted from a wide variety of materials, both commonplace and precious, including shattered mirrors, paper napkins, artificial flowers and gold leaf.
For Gallery 3 Hodges has selected works, in part, as a response to an exhibition held in the same space by his friend Felix Gonzales-Torres in 1994, including a large wall painting reconfigured specifically for the space, Oh Great Terrain (2002). Based upon a camouflage pattern, commonly found in nature, the work is part of his on-going preoccupation with things in the natural world such as flowers, spider’s webs, trees as well as the human body; symbols of which constantly re-emerge in both his drawings and sculptures.
Poetry and text also appear within Hodges’ work and he has cited Jean Genet’s writing as making a strong impression on him – in particular Genet’s use of flower imagery and his descriptions of the colour blue in Our Lady of the Flowers. The poetic expression in all Hodges’ work invites an intimacy with the viewer and although personal they relate to the universal relevance of emotional experiences such as sadness, joy or grief.
