Jim Shaw, 'Untitled (Distorted Face Series: JFK)', 1986
Jim Shaw has been lumped in with a host of 'movements' over the years, but has always managed to wrestle himself out of the clutches of any particular labeling. In fact, his deliberately eclectic approach to working has, for its very continuation, demanded such a resistance and is, in turn, the natural corollary of the disparate obsessions with countercultural Americana and kitsch that are the artist's sustenance.
Back in 2000, Shaw's exhibition of 'Thrift Store Paintings' at London's ICA caused something of a local storm, as more superficial commentators pilloried what they took to be a parade of worthless objects, while others spotted an 'archival impulse' at work in the hands of a persistent traveller of, and reliable guide to, various corners of contemporary America. As Adrian Searle put it at the time, 'The Thrift Store Paintings are fascinating, alarming, troubled and funny. Scary too, just like America.'
In more heady Po-Mo times, Shaw's procedures would probably have been characterised as 'schizophrenic', but, if anything, there is a surprisingly dogged consistency to his output. The 'Distorted Faces' series of painted portraits, for instance, has occupied Shaw since the late 1970s, and has consisted of large-scale paintings and works on paper depicting both world-famous Americans such as Clint Eastwood, John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, as well as art world buddies and luminaries like Mike Kelley and François Pinault. The oil paintings would have all the verisimilitude of Chuck Close, but for the faces having been variously pulled apart and rearranged, stretched, shrunk and enlarged, a methodology that Shaw has compared to the cut-up writing techniques of William Burroughs, that other life-long forager of parts unknown. Curiously, Shaw's process of de- and re-composition tends to draw to a halt just this side of illegible, and the grinning faces remain eerily recognizable.
Jim Shaw, 'Untitled (Distorted Faces Series: Ronald Reagan)', 1986
At BFAS Geneva, an art consultancy established by ex-Sotheby's France boss Marc Blondeau that relocated from Paris in 2000, visitors will have a chance to see these works alongside a showcase of Shaw's plentiful parallel ongoing projects. Among these is the 'Noir' series of airbrushed 'stock' Hollywood character portraits, their faces twisted into horrified expressions, which, as critic Alison M Gingeras has remarked, seem to be in dialogue with the Distorted Faces, or more accurately enmeshed in a constant relay of mutual revulsion. See for yourself and be deliriously repulsed.
Bill Roberts
Jim Shaw, 'Distorted Faces & Portraits, 1978-2006'
Until 14 July
BFAS Galerie
Blondeau Fine Art Services
5, rue de la Muse
CH-1205 Geneva, Switzerland |
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Bill Roberts is a writer based in London, and a PhD candidate at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
