Kim Jones

Untitled (WarDrawing)

< Artists + Writers

Kim Jones, born 1944

“Jones’ work incorporates performance, sculpture, drawing, photography, and painting. He became known early on for his performance persona, ‘Mudman,’ and could be seen walking the streets of Los Angeles and Venice, CA during the 1970s, and then New York City and New York’s subway system during the 1980s, always covered in mud, a nylon stocking stretched over his face, and wearing on his back a crudely constructed lattice-work structure of sticks, tape, and twine. Throughout this time he was also developing drawings and paintings on paper. His works on paper range from intricate graphite drawings involving ‘X’ and ‘O’ figures and erasure indicating movement of each force (referred to as ‘war drawings’), to works that incorporate photography, acrylic paint, ink line work, and collage, many of which have been made over a period of thirty years. Over the years Jones has developed a language of materials and marks: sticks, mud, twine, rats, and ‘X’ and ‘O’ symbols. ‘Mudman,’ and figures that resemble the performance persona, along with a cast of characters, inhabit his elegant and simultaneously grotesque drawings and paintings. This exhibition will include recent drawings on paper and paintings on photographs of Jones’ own performances. The title, Averno, references the crater lake in Southern Italy considered by Ancient Romans to be the entrance point to the underworld, or hell.”

—Pierogi Gallery