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Jim Drain

09.23.11 - 10.16.11
Exhibition — Fondation d'entreprise espace écureuil pour l'art contemporain

Jim Drain
Installation view, 2011

Courtesy Greene Naftali gallery, New York
Crédit photo: le Printemps de Septembre-à Toulouse

 

Jim Drain
Installation view, 2011

Courtesy Greene Naftali gallery, New York
Photo: le Printemps de Septembre-à Toulouse
 

Jim Drain

Installation view, 2011

Courtesy Greene Naftali gallery, New York

Photo: le Printemps de Septembre-à Toulouse
 

Jim Drain
Vue d'installation, 2011

Courtesy Greene Naftali gallery, New York
Photo: le Printemps de Septembre-à Toulouse
 

Jim Drain

How to be nice to your guests after meeting them for the first time, 2011 © Jim Drain

Photo: Jim Drain
 

Jim Drain

Delivering excellence every day, 2011 © Jim Drain
Photo: Jim Drain

Jim Drain

While out on a stroll I sneezed, 2011© Jim Drain
Photo: Jim Drain

Born 1975 in Cleveland (USA), lives and works in Miami (USA).

 

At the heart of Jim Drain’s work are his unique installations/sculptures made from knitted textiles and recycled furniture. An alumnus of the Rhode Island School of Design (1998), he started out on his artistic career by borrowing a friend’s knitting machine. He loved the tool’s repetitive, meditative aspect, and what he could make with it was strangely close to what he was trying to produce: a hard-hitting message attacking America’s consumerism, sexism and cult of the personality, which he nevertheless depicts gently. He contextualises his paintings by placing them in a wider social arena and notably by including his own unabashed nerdiness – for example, he reproduces the big sweaters that he has knitted with patterns inspired by the old Atari video games.


Like his fellow artists from the 1960s and 70s, Drain mixes disciplines, doing away with frontiers and distinctions of genre, spreading freely into different practices. The resulting mode of expression is 100% hybrid and draws on the most obvious popular art, from pseudo-ethnic art to a primitivism revisited by modernity, and includes sculptural design and decorative elements.

 

For le Printemps de septembre he has conceived a new installation specially for the basement of the Fondation espace écureuil.

 

Exhibition realised in partnership with La Fondation d'entreprise espace écureuil pour l'art contemporain.