ART CITIES:Brussels-Jim Hodges

Jim Hodges’ work explores themes of fragility, temporality, love and death in a highly original and poetic vocabulary. He frequently deploys different materials and techniques: from ready-made objects to traditional media such as graphite and ink. Often disarmingly simple or executed with minimal means, Hodges’ works express a sentiment of deeply felt experience and encourage a visceral and communal response.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gladstone Gallery Archive

Jim Hodges in his solo exhibition presents his latest series “Between the flowers and the birds” (2020-21), which is comprised of ten works on paper that function both as a unified series and as discrete art objects unto themselves. Rendered in gold leaf and individuated by way of gestural marks, folds, and delicate lengths of gold chain, each example serves as both a record of itself, and a reminder that the fragment always remembers the whole. Adhering to Hodges’ signature visual vocabulary, the abstract surfaces of these compositions celebrate the poetry of the familiar: natural sylvan silhouettes comingle with man-made camouflage; creases and pencil markings suggest rays of light breaking through clouds; incised surfaces indicate separation while simultaneously defying loss. Replete with the emotional narratives and diaristic qualities that have long served as the cornerstone of Hodges’ practice, the drawings that comprise “Between the flowers and the birds” offer themselves as quiet sites of contemplation in which we might consider absence and presence, moments of pause that remind us that lines of kinship remain stalwart even in the face of distance and time.

Jim 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’ work 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. Often disarmingly simple or executed with minimal means, Jim Hodges’ works express a sentiment of deeply felt experience and encourage a visceral and communal response. Whether working in materials such as curtains woven from artificial silk flowers, metal chains, glass, or using saliva to create ink transfer impressions on paper, Hodges’ works are inhabited by the presence of the body. Incorporated in his choice of media and articulated in text and image is a narrative of human experience, one of life and death and of the proximity of contingency that affects us all. Drawing has remained a primary activity for the artist since the late eighties. The practice is diaristic – observing the passage of time and documenting the intensely personal, the mundane and the overlooked. Hodges has stated: “It always starts inside my body, and I use drawing as a way of getting it out”.

Photo: Left: Jim Hodges, Between the flowers and the birds #2, 2020-21, 24K gold, tracing paper with pencil on paper, 30 x 22 inches / 76.2 x 55.9 cm, Framed: 33 5/8 x 26 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches / 85.4 x 66.7 x 3.8 cm, © Jim Hodges, courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery. Right: Jim Hodges, Between the flowers and the birds #4, 2020-21, 24K gold, tracing paper with pencil on paper, 30 x 22 inches / 76.2 x 55.9 cm, Framed: 33 5/8 x 26 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches / 85.4 x 66.7 x 3.8 cm, © Jim Hodges, courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery

Info: Gladstone Gallery, Grote Hertstraat, 12 Rue du Grand Cerf, Brussels, Duration: 8/5-18/6/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 12:00-18:00, www.gladstonegallery.com