NEW YORK, NY.- Contemporary American artist Jim Hodges (b.1957) addresses issues such as memory, love, and the human condition in a multifaceted practice that includes photography, painting, and sculpture. His use of everyday objects like boulders and denim, coupled with the adoption of transitory shapes like spiderwebs, speaks to the ways in which nature refracts personal experiences into collective ones. Mysterious, beautiful, poetic, and conceptually complex, Hodges’ work has the rare quality of being simultaneously thought-provoking and visually beautiful.
Hodges’ monograph is the latest in Phaidon’s Contemporary Artist series, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2020. For a quarter of a century, Phaidon’s Contemporary Artists series has been at the forefront of documenting the fascinating, varied and complex universe of contemporary art, providing authoritative and extensively illustrated studies of today’s most important artists. Every title offers a comprehensive survey of an individual artist’s work and a range of art writing contributed by an international spectrum of authors, all leading figures in their fields, from art history and criticism to philosophy, cultural theory and fiction. The series has become known for its incisive analysis and multiple perspectives on contemporary art and its inspirations. The series comprises of over 100 books and an incredible list of the most influential names in the contemporary art world, including Marina Abramović, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Jimmie Durham, Elmgreen & Dragset, Theaster Gates, Mona Hatoum, Sharon Hayes Yayoi Kusama, Kerry James Marshall, Cildo Meireles, Trevor Paglen, Adam Pendleton, Doris Salcedo, Lorna Simpson, Frank Stella, Wolfgang Tillmans, Ai Weiwei.
Definitive and personal, the Contemporary Artists series has changed the way art is discussed by creating books in strict collaboration with living artists, underpinned by the voice of the artist themselves, cementing the books as essential resources for all those interested in contemporary art, at any level.
Chapters contain conversations between the artist and a critic, curator or fellow creative, essays detailing their career trajectory, focal pieces on singular artworks, insight into the artist’s influences, artist writings and a bibliography enriched with rarely seen materials including invitation cards, posters, magazine covers and other ephemera. Richly illustrated, the surveys include images of the artists’ studio, offering a deep insight into the place where the creative process takes place, and exhibition installation views.
Phaidon has also partnered with Hodges to create a Limited Edition Contemporary Artist series book. Revisiting an earlier work, ‘Arranged’ which Hodges created in 1996 from a selection of still lives of flowers gathered from the New York City Flower District and captured by photographers Jacob Sadrak and Carrol Cruz, the Limited Edition of the book will contain ‘rearranged for Bill’, 2021. In loving memory of Bill Bartman (1946-2005), Hodges’ long-time friend who founded Art Resources Transfer in 1997. A percentage of the sales of the limited edition will go to support A.R.T. As with ‘Arranged’, these unique photographs have been tipped in to the book. Following simple instructions in the book the reader will be able to construct the artwork by bending the pages to realise the final piece.
Hodges’ monograph includes an interview between the artist and social and political activist and cultural advocate Jane M. Saks, a survey of the artist’s work, From Naturalizing Art to Acculturating Nature, by art historian Robert Hobbs, a focal piece, Toward a Science of Jim Hodges, written by artist, curator and editor Julie Ault, and a Studio Visit chapter with photographer and artist Tim Hailand. The monograph also features the artist’s own writings, The Story, 2003, What Was, 2010 and Untitled, 2020 and closes with a comprehensive bibliography at the back of the book.
Jim Hodges (b. 1957 in Spokane, Washington, lives and works in New York) is a contemporary American sculptor and installation artist. Throughout wide- rang-ing practice, Hodges incorporates everyday objects with more traditional media like photography and paint-ing. Hodges’ work directly addresses issue of temporality, love and broader issues of existential thought through a creative combination of subject matter that is both familiar and enigmatic.
Hodges attended Fort Wright College and received his MFA from the Pratt Institute in 1986. He went on to serve as the chair of the Sculpture Department at the Yale University School of Art from 2011–2012, and was the subject of a major mid-career retrospective in 2013–2014, which travelled from the Dallas Museum of Art to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. His works are in the most prominent institutional collections, including the Art institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
