NEW YORK, NY.- Jonathan LeVine Gallery presents Search Party, a series of eight new works and a site-specific installation by Philadelphia-based artist Jim Houser, in what is his fourth solo exhibition at the gallery.

Through Houser’s signature style of visual poetry and personal iconography, the artist extends his practice of self-examination to include the topic of art making itself. Works in this exhibition serve to consider Houser’s relationship to the artwork he creates, the compulsion to create it and how his lifestyle has been formed, consequently.

Houser’s collages become visual poems through which he cathartically communicates his most private thoughts and emotions with surprising candor. By cataloging his experiences and feelings through a unique pictorial language, the artist creates his own brand of curative iconography. Houser’s aesthetic often mixes stylized figures, hand-drawn typography and geometric shapes, creating quilt-like collages in a cohesive color palette.

Houser layers acrylic on wood, fabric and found objects, blurring the lines between collage and sculpture. Once combined, it becomes clear that all of his works are associative and directly related. This deceptively dimensional quality is further highlighted when the pieces are assembled into one of the artist’s elaborate installations, adding to the complexity of each individual piece by emphasizing a greater inter-connectivity to the body of work as a whole.

Jim Houser was born in 1973 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city where he currently resides. He is a self-taught artist and an honorary member of the Philly-based artist collective Space1026. In 2010, Houser released a vinyl record of instrumental music composed to accompany his installations; the songs are currently available on iTunes. Houser’s collages, paintings and installations have been exhibited extensively in institutions such as the Laguna Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as galleries in Milan, Paris, Sydney and São Paulo. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.