BOOK: Jim Hodges (Signed Edition), Phaidon Publications

Jim Hodges is an artist who addresses issues such as memory, love, and existential struggles through a multifaceted practice that includes photography, screen printing, and sculpture. His use of found materials like rocks and denim, coupled with the adoption of transitory shapes like spiderwebs, speaks of a personal experience that resonates on a collective level filtered through elements available in nature. Mysterious, beautiful, poetic, and conceptually deep, Hodges’s work has the rare quality of being simultaneously thought-provoking and visually beautiful. With 160 pages and 160 photos “Jim Hodges (Signed Edition)” by Phaidon Publications is the first in-depth survey of the life and work of Jim Hodges, one of America’s most celebrated contemporary artists. After earning an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute in 1986, Hodges began to create ephemeral objects in his Lower Manhattan basement studio. Working in a basement without windows had a huge impact on his art. Hodges believed himself to be ‘unearthing’ and even ‘excavating’ a new way of making art as he interrogated the concept of permanence. -Dimitris Lempesis