Jim Hodges
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.
Jim Hodges was born in 1957 in Spokane, Washington, USA. He now lives and works in New York, USA.
Often disarmingly simple or executed with minimal means, 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”.
In June 2023, Jim Hodges’ sculpture ‘Craig’s Closet’, commissioned for the New York City AIDS Memorial Park, was unveiled. In January 2021, Jim Hodges’ installation ‘I dreamed a world and called it Love’, was unveiled at Grand Central Station, New York, USA. Commissioned by MTA Arts & Design, the work comprises over 5000 pieces of mirrored glass in over 70 different colours. From April to September 2019 ‘Unearthed’, a monumental tree stump cast in bronze, went on display at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, USA. In 2016 Hodges’ text-based sculpture ‘With Liberty and Justice For All’ was installed on the exterior of the new building at Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, USA where it remains on view.
From 2013 to 2015 Hodges was the subject of a major touring retrospective, ‘Give More Than You Take’, which started in Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas and toured to Walker Arts Centre, Minneapolis; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA.
Other selected solo exhibitions include: ‘Impossible Flower’, Baldwin Gallery, Aspen (2023); ‘Location Proximity’, Gladstone Gallery, New York (2022); ‘LOVE POWER’, Massimo de Carlo, Central, Hong Kong (2020); ‘Jim Hodges’, Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, USA (2019); ‘Jim Hodges: silence stillness,’ Anthony Meier Fine Arts, California, USA (2018); ‘turning pages in the book of love / voltando pagine nel libro dell’amore,’ Massimo De Carlo Gallery, Milan, Italy (2017); ‘Tracing the contour of our days,’ Baldwin Gallery, Colorado, USA (2017); ‘I dreamed a world and called it Love,’ Gladstone Gallery, New York, USA (2016); ‘With Liberty and Justice for All,’ rooftop installation, The Contemporary, Texas, USA (2016); ‘Jim Hodges,’ Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK (2016); ‘Jim Hodges," Gladstone Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (2015); ‘Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Take,’ Hammer Museum, California, USA (2014), travelled from: Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, USA (2013); Walker Art Center, Minnesota, USA (2014); Institute of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts, USA (2014); ‘Jim Hodges,’ Anthony Meier Fine Arts, , California, USA (2014); ‘With Liberty and Justice For All (A Work in Progress),’ Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, USA (2014); ‘Jim Hodges: Drawings,’ Baldwin Gallery, Colorado, USA (2012); ‘Jim Hodges,’ Gladstone Gallery, New York, USA (2011); ‘New Work’, Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, USA (2010); ‘Love et cetera’, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2009); toured to Camden Art Centre, London, UK and Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Venice, Italy; ‘You Will See Things’, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, USA (2009) and ‘Jim Hodges: This line to you’, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostello, Spain (2005).
Hodges’s works are included in prominent collections internationally, including Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California, USA; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, USA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA; Miami Art Museum, Florida, USA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C, USA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; Walker Art Centre, Minnesota, USA; Musee National, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France.