MARC STRAUS

Gallery

Chris Jones

October 23 - December 11, 2016

Opening Reception
Sun October 23 2016, 6pm

NEW YORK – MARC STRAUS presents its third solo exhibition of British artist Chris Jones, opening on October 23rd, featuring new works made almost entirely of appropriated printed material.

Chris Jones’ London studio is covered in images culled from discount books and discarded magazines. He is interested in their protean power to unlock subconscious associations and serendipitous connections. When developing a work, Jones refrains from looming obvious narrative threads − instead his wondrous constructions invite interpretations based on the viewer’s personal memories and perspectives.

The Apartment series are wall-mounted diagrammatic tableaux where different timelines, geographies and cultures co-exist within an imagined residential apartment. Jones exposes rooms that at times have visual synchronicity and elsewhere are completely incongruous with one another. Motifs such as vein-like pipe systems span several rooms while clothes may spill out from one and invade another – each Apartment is a phenomenological puzzle.

For the first time Jones’ Apartments have evolved into a grand freestanding tower sculpture. All four sides of the building interact; peer into a room and see across to details from another. Piranesi stairs lead to visual dead-ends whilst suggesting further hidden rooms; architectural facades from all cultures characterize the exterior walls. Here is an anachronistic Tower of Babel or a J.G. Ballardian High Rise captured in three dimensions.

A recurring theme is the high-speed vehicle such as the sports car and motorcycle. Jones sculpts a mimetic version but also allows alternate worlds to form within the object. In the show, a fiery red racing bike is left abandoned – once a symbol of speed and thrills, its current entropic state harbors new life within its cavernous shell, recalling Thomas Coles’ evolutionary cycles.

In a sense, Jones’ work is less an act of sculpture and more of subverting existing forms – the various reproductions of fruits in a nearby still life are created through a tautological process of layering papier-mache images over actual fruits. Within Jones’ version of this 17th-century Vanitas, a Memento Mori human skull reveals a grand cathedral dome on verso; the ruins of an amalgamated historic building emerge through the composition, together they create an allegorical enigma.

Finally, the gallery space itself becomes an experiential image. In this mid-19th century former tenement building Jones has suggested traces of vanished rooms with bricks and collapsed walls. The visitor navigates these spaces to discover artworks within and thus experiences Jones’ illusionary world, both enchanting and metaphysical.

Photography by Ken Tan.

 Download in PDF

Read More
Installation View
Chris Jones  2016 Marc Straus Gallery
chris-jones-october-2016-installation-6
Chris Jones  2016 Marc Straus Gallery
chris-jones-october-2016-installation-2
Chris Jones  2016 Marc Straus Gallery
chris-jones-october-2016-installation-1
Chris Jones  2016 Marc Straus Gallery
chris-jones-october-2016-installation-07
Chris Jones  2016 Marc Straus Gallery
chris-jones-october-2016-installation-4
Chris Jones  2016 Marc Straus Gallery
chris-jones-october-2016-installation-3
Chris Jones  2016 Marc Straus Gallery
chris-jones-october-2016-installation-5
Works In Exhibition
Chris Jones 2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
76 x 21 x 21 inches (193.04 x 53.3 x 53.5 cm) 2016 Marc Straus Gallery
Of Vanished Alphabets

2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
76 x 21 x 21 inches (193.04 x 53.3 x 53.5 cm)

Chris Jones 2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
76 x 21 x 21 inches (193.04 x 53.3 x 53.5 cm) 2016 Marc Straus Gallery
Of Vanished Alphabets (Alternate View)

2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
76 x 21 x 21 inches (193.04 x 53.3 x 53.5 cm)

Chris Jones 2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
76 x 21 x 21 inches 2016 Marc Straus Gallery
Of Vanished Alphabets (Alternate view)

2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
76 x 21 x 21 inches

Chris Jones 2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
34 x 23 x 22 inches (86.4 x 58.4 x 55.9 cm) 2016 Marc Straus Gallery
The Trader

2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
34 x 23 x 22 inches (86.4 x 58.4 x 55.9 cm)

Chris Jones 2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
34 x 23 x 22 inches 2016 Marc Straus Gallery
The Trader (Back view)

2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
34 x 23 x 22 inches

Chris Jones 2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
14.25 x 11.5 x 1 inches 2016 Marc Straus Gallery
Plot Twist

2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
14.25 x 11.5 x 1 inches

Chris Jones 2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
14.3 x 11.5 x 1 inches (36.3 x 29.2 x 2.5 cm) 2016 Marc Straus Gallery
The Somnambulist

2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
14.3 x 11.5 x 1 inches (36.3 x 29.2 x 2.5 cm)

Chris Jones 2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
34 x 71 x 20 in / 87 x 180 x 50 cm 2016 Marc Straus Gallery
In Search Of Liberty

2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
34 x 71 x 20 in / 87 x 180 x 50 cm

Chris Jones 2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
34 x 71 x 20 in (87 x 180 x 50 cm) 2016 Marc Straus Gallery
In Search Of Liberty

2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
34 x 71 x 20 in (87 x 180 x 50 cm)

Chris Jones 2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
63 x 44 x 1 inches
 2016 Marc Straus Gallery
After They Had Left

2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
63 x 44 x 1 inches

Chris Jones  2016 Marc Straus Gallery
After They Had Left (Side detail)
Chris Jones 2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
63 x 44 x 1 inches 2016 Marc Straus Gallery
In A Given Place

2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
63 x 44 x 1 inches

Chris Jones 2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
63 x 44 x 1 inches 2016 Marc Straus Gallery
Where Memory Is Traded

2016
Book and magazine images, board, polymer varnish
63 x 44 x 1 inches

Reviews
Click image to zoom