THE PREGNANT PAUSE, NEW WORKS BY JIM HOUSER
Monster Children Gallery presents THE PREGNANT PAUSE
NEW WORKS BY JIM HOUSER
Opening night: THURSDAY 25TH FEBRUARY 6.00PM
Continues: 26TH FEBRUARY - 18TH MARCH 2010
About the Exhibition:
Jim Houser is a self-taught Philadelphia painter and installation artist, well known for his personal images on small canvases, juxtaposed with text and objects. Jim got his start at Space 1026 back in 1998. His artworks have graced the walls and floors of galleries around the world including Jonathan Levine Gallery in NYC, Merry Karnowsky Gallery in LA, and Colette Gallery in Paris. A monograph of Houser's work titled Babel was published by Ginko Press.
For THE PREGNANT PAUSE, 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. 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.”
The MC Gallery is supported by:
Asahi & Resolution.
