Kim Jones at the Henry
STICKS AND COAT HANGERS, mud and electrical tape, children's toys and chicken wire - one never knows what will appear in a Kim Jones sculpture. And, because his two-dimensional pieces are frequently reworked over time, one doesn't know from year to year what form the drawings or photographs will take. The current retrospective at the Henry gives ample evidence of this diversity. It also exemplifies their somewhat startling and symbolic nature.
Two seminal events in his life profoundly affected Jones' art. As a child of 7, he was diagnosed with a polio-like disease that confined him to bed and a wheelchair, and then constrained him in leg braces until he was 10. The enforced isolation and inability to participate in the usual childhood games resulted in his creation of imaginary worlds that still find resonance in his work today.
The other decisive event was Jones' service in the Marine Corps in Vietnam when he was 22. His war experiences included combat, so he came to know the horrifying fear and the unrelieved boredom that are a serviceman's lot. The violence, anger and callousness that war engenders have been expressed in Jones' art throughout his career.
In the early 1970s he was part of the avant-garde artist's circle that hung around Los Angeles and Venice Beach. As a performance artist, he roamed the streets in the garb of his alter ego, Mudman. He was masked to hide or distort his face, covered in mud and encumbered by a construction of sticks, chicken wire, tape and various oddments joined together to create an unwieldy backpack of sorts. Some suggest that Mudman is a metaphorical representation of everyman, loaded down as he makes the painful journey through life.
A number of the backpacks are on view in this show. But here they have been affixed to the walls of the gallery and joined together by swirling graphite drawings that evoke the sense of a contrail or exhaust shooting out from the rear of a fast-moving vehicle.
Also on display are a number of landscapes of the imaginary, pencil-on-paper worlds Jones started making as a child. These flatland or war drawings represent opposing armies composed of simple dots and Xs battling through fortresses, rivers, lakes and city streets. The drawings look a bit like topographic military maps, or think of diagrams for football plays or video war games. You'll note by the erasures that the battles have never been concluded, that Jones as Commanding General is still moving his armies about in the endless game of war. Another metaphor perhaps.
Artists cannot help but include within their works some autobiographical references. For Jones, the autobiographical is the overwhelming influence. We know he encountered rats in the mud holes of Vietnam. Whether rats played a part in Jones' childhood, we aren't told, but their representations are a significant part of his work.
On view at the Henry are a number of pieces featuring rats. Much of the floor of the first gallery is covered with life-sized rubber rats that seem to scurry with curled tails in a landscape composed of bunches of stick joined together at their centers by black electrical tape. Looked at in a certain way, these sticks might well be landmines. It's not a far leap to suggest that the rats represent humans caught in a world where destructive forces surround them on all sides.
Ratlike birds made with wire coat hangers and other found and altered substances hang in doorways and alcoves. Rats also find a place in the two-dimensional art that covers the walls in another of the gallery spaces.
The framed images are almost all multimedia consisting of photographs on which Jones has painted acrylic images and drawn in ink. Many have multiple dates written on the bottom righthand corner, representing the numerous times he has altered them.
The subject matter ranges from the grotesque to the romantic. Most pieces include hybrid creatures or body parts. Phallic representations are ubiquitous, interspersed among the vegetal elements and carcasses. It's a bizarre depiction in the mode of Hieronymus Bosch. In contrast is a series of Playmate Calendar Girls. Each girl of each month has been painted over or inked in a fashion reminiscent of the Romantic artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other Pre-Raphaelites.
Two videos provide a useful complement to the static work in the exhibition. The scenes of Mudman in action on the streets of Brooklyn are particularly important in rounding out this retrospective of an artist who has always been controversial, and certainly has never been dull.
'KIM JONES: A RETROSPECTIVE'
Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington
Through Jan. 20, 2008
Tuesdays-Sundays 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thursdays until 8 p.m.
Admission: $10 general, $6 seniors, students of all ages free
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