The artworks of Los Angeles-based artist Jim Shaw—paintings, drawings, and sculptures—are layered with references pulled from American history, pulp novels, protest posters, music albums, and comic books. Paired with elements that represent his life and the unconscious workings of his own mind, they exist in a surrealist dreamscape where traces of stories both known and not allow the mind of the viewer to run rampant with circulating knowledge and sparks of imagination.
“Thinking the Unthinkable,” is Shaw’s debut exhibition with Gagosian in Los Angeles and features a suite of new paintings and other works that wholly fall into this realm. Titled in homage to Herman Kahn’s 1962 Thinking About the Unthinkable, a book about nuclear war, Shaw’s featured pieces are laden with motifs and imagery related to the publication’s daunting topic, along with other references, among them being the deconstruction of Hollywood legends and an exploration of certain hallucinogens. Taking on an air of psychedelia that is sometimes bright and playful and others dizzying and mysterious, the works on view are filled with imagery like mushroom clouds, the form of an egg, the figure of the goddess, the pillar, references to the alphabet, and the recurring setting of the ocean, all carefully depicted in Shaw’s figurative hand.
Jim Shaw, “Cary Grant,” 2022, oil and acrylic on muslin, 84 x 64 inches; © Jim Shaw, photo by Jeff McLane, courtesy of Gagosian.
In the painting Cary Grant, a portrait of the actor takes an eerie turn when Shaw depicts further visions of him, along with exploding rockets, painted atop Grant’s own face—one in a series of its kind. Nearby is Down By the Old Maelstrom (where I split in two) a fantastical display of showmanship involving flying articles of clothing and an incomplete message reading “In the beginning was the word…”. The beach scene, No Bikini Atoll, incorporates a faded iteration of the figure of Venus oceanside, referencing the nuclear weapons testing that took place at the titular location.
Accompanying Shaw’s paintings are a series of sculptures that includes works like an inflatable cloud printed with mustaches, floating from the gallery’s ceiling, a canvas with a 3D rendering of a particular fungus-shaped cloud, and a wooden cut-out that has been painted with the faces of familiar icons such as Marilyn Monroe.
Jim Shaw, “No Bikini Atoll,” 2022, oil and acrylic on muslin, 48 x 80 inches; © Jim Shaw, photo by Jeff McLane, courtesy of Gagosian.
Jim Shaw, “Thinking the Unthinkable,” 2022, installation view; © Jim Shaw, photo by Jeff McLane, courtesy of Gagosian.
“Thinking the Unthinkable” is on view at Gagosian Beverly Hills through February 25.
