UB Art Gallery to present "Kim Jones: A Retrospective"

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- "Kim Jones: A Retrospective" will open in the First Floor, Lightwell and Second Floor Galleries at UB Art Gallery in the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) with a public reception on Oct. 19 from 5-7 p.m. The artist will be in attendance.

Jones also will be a guest speaker at the Visual Studies Speaker series on Oct. 16 at 6:30 p.m. in the Screening Room, 112 Center for the Arts.

UB Art Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. with extended hours on Thursday until 7 p.m. Please note: exhibition and gallery will open at 2 p.m. on Oct. 27. For information, please call 716-645-6912. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, is on view through Dec. 17.

Though Jones is recognized internationally for his performance art, installation, sculpture and drawing, this is his first full retrospective. "Kim Jones: A Retrospective" will feature sculpture, drawings, collages and a photo-documentation timeline giving a comprehensive overview of the artist's performances and installations from 1954 to the present, as well as two large-scale installations conceived for the exhibition.

Jones was born out of the 1970s performance art movement in Southern California, where he became widely known for his alter ego, Mudman. Caked in mud, bearing a lattice appendage of sticks attached to his back and wearing a headdress and nylon mask, this unsettling, itinerant figure appeared on city streets, beaches, subways and in galleries. Connecting the abstract, formal investigations of process and material-based artists and the intense physicality of body-based performance, Mudman evolved from Jones' early stick sculptures tightly bound in what would become his signature materials of nylon, rope, electrical tape and foam rubber. Jones uses documentation of Mudman, as well as sculptures that result from performances and installations to develop an idiom of forms and hybrid creatures -- inspired, in part, by Bruce Nauman and Eva Hesse -- that appear throughout his drawings.

Two pivotal moments in Jones' life profoundly inform the content of his work. He was born in San Bernardino, Calif., in 1944 and as a child was diagnosed with a polio-like illness that confined him first to a wheelchair and then leg braces from ages seven to 10. Thirteen years later, he served for a year as a Marine in the Vietnam War from 1967 to 68. Traces of these ordeals reverberate throughout his work dealing with war, confinement and catharsis.

His frequent reuse of materials and motifs in his artwork has resulted in a core imagery that demands an inquiry into cultural representations of violence. As if recalling a trauma or enacting a ritual remembrance, he reworks select drawings and sculpture, which explains why most of them reference multiple dates spanning decades.

Jones' drawings fall into two distinct categories. The first group portrays landscapes in which humans morph into animals or exist in a symbiotic relationship with prosthetic devices. The second category is Jones' "War Drawings," two-dimensional, battlefield diagrams done painstakingly in pencil and erasure marks that endlessly pit the x-men and dot-men against each other. Included among them will be a 35-foot, floor-to-ceiling drawing that sprawls across three walls providing powerful, and timely, commentary on eternal confrontation and diplomacy.

Jones received his BFA in 1971 from the California Institute of Arts in Los Angeles, and his MFA in 1973 from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. During the past 30 years, Jones' work has been featured in significant group exhibitions, including "Disparities & Deformations: Our Grotesque," Site Santa Fe (2004); "Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles" (1998); Mapping at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1994); and "Choices" at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1986).

He also has completed several prestigious residencies, many of which were invitational, ArtPace in San Antonio (2003); Sirius Art Center in Ireland (2003); The American Academy in Rome (2002); The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh (1990); and PS1 in Long Island City, Queens (1983 to 1985).

"Kim Jones: A Retrospective" is organized by Sandra Firmin and the UB Art Galleries and Julie Joyce and the Luckman Fine Arts Complex, California State University, Los Angeles. An accompanying 160-page monograph published by MIT Press, "MUDMAN: The Odyssey of Kim Jones," will feature four essays, more than 50 color plates and a comprehensive bibliography. Essayists include writer-historians Robert Storr and Kristine Stiles, and exhibition curators Sandra Firmin and Julie Joyce.

The exhibition will travel to the Luckman Gallery (March 24-May 19, 2007) following its stay in Buffalo.

The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue are made possible through the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Fifth Floor Foundation.

The UB Art Gallery is funded by the UB College of Arts and Sciences, the Visual Arts Building Fund, the Seymour H. Knox Foundation Fine Arts Fund and the Fine Arts Center Endowment.