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August Issue 2004
Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, Features Works by Jim Hodges
The
University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Greensboro, NC,
will present an exhibition of works by Jim Hodges which considers
light as material, subject and metaphor, on view from Aug. 9 through
Oct. 24, 2004, at Weatherspoon Art Museum.
Hodges is one of the foremost of a group of contemporary artists who have returned to an aesthetic of beauty, producing work that urges audiences toward experiences of intense visual pleasure and meaning. The ten-year survey focuses on Hodges' use of light as a material, subject, and metaphor. Twenty sculptures, drawings, assemblages, and installations, made between 1995 and 2003, are included and comprise the largest museum presentation of Hodges's artwork to date. Weatherspoon Art Museum co-organized this nationally traveling exhibition with the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. The accompanying, full color, 116-page catalogue is the most comprehensive publication on the artist's work and includes an essay by Weatherspoon curator Ron Platt.
Hodges relies upon the thoughtful interrogation of simple means and materials and the nature of perception to make highly evocative and visually stunning work. Panes of mirror shattered and pieced back together; colored pencil applied to paper or directly on the gallery walls; spider webs fashioned from chain; and sculptures of carefully chosen colored light bulbs are among the ways by which Hodges interrupts the viewers' usual understanding and expectation of color, form, and even sight.
Raised in Spokane, WA, Hodges describes his boyhood self as, "a kid who grew up in the woods and spent many hours drawing from nature and marveling at how the sunlight bent shadows around the craggy trunks of pine trees." This intimate early rapport with nature's forms and forces has had a causal effect on Hodges' practice. From the beginning, Hodges' art has evolved out of intuitive play and investigation. These early experiments exhibited the artists' attention to the pivotal themes of his mature work: time, ephemerality, and illusion.
In mirror, Hodges discovered a material loaded with qualities and associations. His mirror works have two essential components: the viewer, and light itself. He is drawn to what he calls the mirror's "live quality...how a mirror is affected by the changing light of day." Yet the works are incomplete until a viewer steps before them. Each viewer brings his or her own unique presence to the work, and as such, participates in the structure of its meaning.
Hodges' acute concentration on light as subject led him to begin using light as a material in the form of commercial light bulbs. His love of color is abundantly clear in his electrified works. Enameled square or rectangular panels mount flush to the walls as single units or in multi-part arrangements. Hodges employs a full variety of commercially available colors, designs, sockets, wattages, and shapes of bulbs, generating radiant colors that converge, overlap, dissolve, and change over a period of time.
Recent Prismacolor pencil works are boldly and brilliantly graphic and focus on the formal fundamentals of line, shape, and color. Hodges creates geometric forms such as fans cropped by the edges of a paper sheet, circles within circles, and intersecting arcs. Lines often radiate out from a central point; in much the same way that light typically is represented as straight lines emanating from a single source.
A number of programs organized through the Weatherspoon Education Department will be presented in support of the exhibition. On Sept. 9, 2004, at 7pm, curator Ron Platt will lead a gallery talk on Hodges works in the exhibition. On Oct. 1, 2004, at 7pm, artist Jim Hodges will return to the Weatherspoon to give a talk on the development of his work. The following day, Oct. 2, 2004, visitors of all ages are invited to Weatherspoon Family Day. This free afternoon of fun includes art-making activities, gallery tours, refreshments and entertainment. Hours are 1 to 4pm rain or shine. For further information about these events, or to volunteer, please contact the Museum at 336/256-1448.
The UNCG Department of Interior Architecture will also present programs in support of the exhibition. On Aug. 25, 2004, at 1pm, IARC students will share designs inspired by the work of Jim Hodges. On Sept. 30, 2004, at 7pm, the Interior Architecture Department present Kaleidoscope: Light, Color, Spirit, a discussion of current research in interior design with faculty members Ericka Hedgecock and Tina Saragwi.
The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue are made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, The Laurie Tisch Sussman Foundation, The Overbrook Foundation, and the Friends of the Tang.
The Weatherspoon, home to one of the finest collections of contemporary art in the Southeast, presents more than twenty exhibitions and a full host of educational activities annually. Recent exhibitions, such as From Warhol to Pop and Back Again; Adrian Piper: A Retrospective, and Borne of Necessity have drawn record audiences and critical acclaim.
For more information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 336/334-5770 or at (www.weatherspoon.uncg.edu).
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