ART-PRESENTATION:Jim Hodges

Jim Hodges, B.E.2, Silver and Gold, 2011. Japanese Silver, 24K Gold, Silver on primed and unprimed linen 59 1/2 x 59 1/2 x 6 7/8 in. Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery. On loan from Pizzuti CollectionJim Hodges is among a generation of artists who came of age in the 1980s and 90s amidst a deepening AIDS epidemic and the continuing struggle for LGBTQ visibility and rights; love and loss are intertwined themes in his work. Whether using words and phrases, reflective materials or photographs, Hodges addresses the personal and collective experience of the body and the senses. With a highly poetic sensibility, he draws our attention to the meeting place of external objects and interior life.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Columbus Museum of Art Archive

Jim Hodges’ exhibition at Columbus Museum of Art features more than thirty works from the Collection of Ron and Ann Pizzuti. A highly regarded figure in contemporary art, Hodges often finds complex beauty in the fragile and fleeting, the mundane, and the timeless. His work is attuned to the power of a simple gesture. Hodges was born in Spokane, Washington. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Fort Wright College in 1980 and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY in 1986. Since the late 1980s, Hodges has created a broad range of work exploring themes of fragility, temporality, love and death utilizing a highly original and poetic vocabulary. His works frequently deploy different materials and techniques, from ready-made objects to more traditional media, such as graphite, ink, gold leaf and mirrored elements. Charting both the overlooked and obvious touchstones of life with equal attention and poignancy, Hodges’ conceptual practice is as broad and expansive as the range of human experiences he captures. In his work, Jim Hodges reveals qualities of beauty and grace in the most unassuming materials. Through relatively simple acts of manipulation and reappraisal, he invests the man-made with a previously absent level of emotion and authenticity. In Blue is a diaphanous curtain of lush, tropical colors that is both imposing for its monumental scale and delicate in its fragility. Activated by the slightest breeze, its artificial elements ripple with the movement of natural life forms. To create “In Blue” (1996), Hodges took apart hundreds of silk flowers, flattened and ironed each element, pinned the pieces together, and then carefully hand-sewed them into a scrim.

Info: Columbus Museum of Art, 480 East Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio, Duration: 1/6-22/9/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 10:00-17:00, Thu 10:00-21:00, www.columbusmuseum.org