#jim condron

[psikonauti]

Jim Condron (American,b.1970)

Adolescents with Slivers of Ice in their Hearts, 2020

Oil on Linen

[jordi-gali]

Jim Condron

https://jcondron.com/in-the-bankers-box/

[psikonauti]

Jim Condron (American,b.1970)

Dry Baptism

Oil on Linen

[jordi-gali]

@j_condron

Jim Condron

Opening next Friday, June 7, 6-9pm, “Trash Talking: History In Assemblage” at The Delaware Contemporary, 200 South Madison Street,Wilmington, DE. (“The trouble with postcult is that you lose your link to the fate of mankind,” 2016) 

[huntingtonnow]

Report: Paramount Sold to Live Nation

The Paramount has been sold to Live Nation, according to the Long-Islander newspaper. The downtown entertainment hub, owned by Dominick Catoggio, Jim Condron, Brian Doyle, and Stephen Ubertini. took over the former IMAC space on New York Avenue 13 years ago and has hosted thousands of shows since then, featuring top-ranked acts such as Billy Joel, comedian Kevin James, Ed Sheeran and many…

Report: Paramount Sold to Live Nation

[adahrosegallery]

These three separate works by Jim Condron are intricate, self-contained worlds, but also kindred spirits — like abstract action figures. Like that of the toes of a missing leg, on the bottom left, incorporates small pieces of wood, bark, plastic netting, animal fur, bamboo (or is it PVC pipe?). A dark gray mitten missing a thumb rises up at the back of the assemblage, topped with a tiny scrap of pencil shavings. The different levels of the objects that make up this tiny sculpture suggest a landscape diorama (rolling grasses backed by mountains), but this collection of fragments could easily be a personal, meticulously manipulated shrine. The mitten construction and an orange fragments each sit upon their own wooden pedestals, and  the piece of bark wrapped around the base protects and holds together a group of objects made precious. I am bound to state that she ate an enormous dinner, on the bottom right, also sits on a sort of pedestal. The organic yellow form at its base seems to serve as a vessel for a blue flame or sword or both. Arranged a bit below waist level in the gallery, these two objects share a ritualistic but also friendly nature, together observing a third Condron piece, on the wall just behind them.

- Caroline Meyers, VCUarts Sculpture & Extended Media 2020

[melanieparke]

Jim Condron oil on paper on linen repurposed rabbit fur 7.5x5 inches, 2013

[jwrb]

The obvious shared feature of several new paintings by Jim Condron is their relatively small size compared to other publicly displayed works by the Baltimore artist. Each of these works is about the size of a book cover, a somehow apposite comparison given the artist's explicit literary references in the past. Working at this scale encourages playfulness and experimentation, and partly for this reason these paintings have the character of milestones on a journey. By limiting the space upon which he works, the artist is required not to do more with less, necessarily – but to imagine more or to imagine deeper into a given space. Large canvasses may be particularly suitable for making bold statements, but working small often means pushing boundaries within. “Her talk is like my secret writing” (oil on paper on silk, 5 x 5.5 inches, 2013) might inspire a neo-formalist analysis by some latter-day Clement Greenberg, but what enticed this writer was the swirling milk-chocolatey paint laid thick with a knife on paper. It conjured up a sensuous memory, that of sticking my finger into a bowl of buttery cake frosting and licking it off. Truly “sensational” events tend to be channeled deep in our minds, and each of these works by Mr. Condron, layered and built up with paint as they are, combine, appeal to, and play off both the visual and tactile senses. Mr. Condron hints of his close association and love for books in the ironically titled “I have no time to read” (oil on paper on leather, 5 x 8.75 inches, 2013), in which the painting is mounted on a strip of pebbled brown morocco, for centuries a style of treated leather favored by bookbinders. He builds a dense impasto by mixing and shaping paint with a palette knife or other instrument to create uncertain topographies suggested by ridges and troughs imbued with rich color. The result is like a map representing no geographic location, but a projection instead of interior life, with edges neatly trimmed. There is a sculptural character to the work, and no reading of it seems complete without taking into account the feel of the thing. But therein lies the rub: we don't usually go around handling works of art, though perhaps we should. Strips of mink fur (re-purposed) frame the third painting, entitled “Could you hate me less” (oil on handmade paper on board, mink; 8.5 x 8.5 inches, 2013). The painting is composed of rough nodes and smooth planes of oils in moody hues of indigo, blue, olive, gold, cadmium yellow and white. These seem to bubble up and erupt from the paper as if sprung from thermal wells, a kind of materialization of emotional life. But there's something else here. At the center, in what appears to be a quiet recess, are a glancing pair of alert, calm eyes in the midst of this chromatic uproar. The eyes appear feminine. They cast a side-long look not at the viewer, but at the world beyond, as though apprehending something invisible to us. To be honest, these eyes may be nothing more than an accident of perception – another way of saying that one viewer, or many, may just be seeing things. But we have a proclivity to see things, like the image of the Virgin Mary on a half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich. (Someone paid lots of money for it!) To paraphrase Nietzsche: stare into a painting long enough, and the painting will stare back. Yet if we want to respect the possibilities inherent in a work of art, and the intentions of the artist, and our own intentions as well, then we are called to respond to them by first opening ourselves to all the vivifying elements of personal experience – our senses, our memories, inclinations, feelings, thoughts. Even the “wrong” ones, the ones that put us on a different track altogether. “Make it New” was the slogan of poet Ezra Pound, a pillar of the modernist movement, to the writers and artists of the early 20th century. Pound's commandment has reverberated in the minds of creators long past his lifetime. And he came by it honestly. One of the effects of modern era, already in place since the Enlightenment, has been an over-riding concern for novelty and “originality” in the production of art. Thus we see a rapid succession of artistic developments (the “-isms”) during the last century, all the way to “post-post-modernism” and the anxious recognition that the whole enterprise has become, well, a very big business indeed. For some, maybe for many, novelty in artistic production has worn itself out. And in the digital age, what does originality even mean besides endless combination and recombination? I'm not suggesting that art has exhausted itself or that it has come to some terminus. Just the opposite. Until now, the burden of producing art has been on the makers of art (“Make it New!”). But what if the new model for artistic production is the meme, as opposed to the passive viewing of a discrete object? (Which is, for most people, what the experience of art has usually entailed.) What if, going forward, our response, individually and collectively, to a work of art becomes the crucial and dynamic element in the experience? It would certainly challenge our notion of what art is, who makes it, and how it enters our life. It also would imply an entirely different kind of encounter or engagement with art, one that is more awake, more active, and more bold.