The "fastest painter in the world" JIM AVIGNON has struck again. During the pandemic more than 50 new works have been created. We would like to welcome you to the exhibition UP TO DATE at HEITSCH GALLERY. On March 19 you are invited to visit us in time slots of 30 minutes between 2 and 8 pm! Due to the current situation, we would like to ask you to pre-register at pr@heitschgallery.com.
Jim, a creative all-rounder, tells in a colorful, pictorial-artistic language of the not yet extinct topicality of the achievements of Classical Modernism. His paintings are captivating in their forceful exploration of contemporary, socio-critical themes and in their borrowing from Umberto Eco's "open artwork" in that, inherently related to New Objectivity, they promote a playful approach to the painterly tradition. At first glance, the viewer recognizes numerous paraphrases of iconographically important figures and motifs of Old and New Masters. From Avignon's biography as a Berliner, his motifs are as much influenced by Max Beckmann and Georg Grosz as they are inspired by Picasso from his experiences in France. In a narrow pictorial space, paraphrases from multiple, simultaneously presented visual perspectives crowd in, reflecting today's symptomatic restlessness and the crushing attempt to cope with the flood of information. It is precisely at this point - Jim Avignon refers to himself in a dualistic, ambivalent, almost paradoxical way as the "fastest painter in the world" - that he refers to the neo-objective topoi of boundless "traffic," the "compulsion for speed and efficiency," the dehumanizing "isolation" and "alienation" and the associated inner "coldness" in order to place the situation of the 1920s in relation to the pandemic reality of the 2020s. He thinks the terms further from today's perspective and postulates a "failure in the over-accelerated world." What Avignon processes as a painter and seismograph of our time corresponds to the "Zeitgeist", as the currently running exhibition "Welt im Umbruch. From Otto Dix to August Sander - Art of the 1920s" at the Stadtmuseum Munich confirms this.
Heitsch Gallery invites you, dear art lovers, to the exhibition "Jim Avignon - up to date ". Follow the artist into these manifold, parallel existing, fragmentary interlocking worlds, in which habitual visual experiences are irritated. Already the title picture "up to date" shows: There is no escape. The sailor, positioned extremely close, has literally had the plug pulled - a hollow-eyed pink raven holds the torn cable in its beak. In his thoughts, death and temptation in female form balance each other out. Furthermore, murderous capitalism is thematized by the real estate shark with cigar, technology taking on a life of its own, and the femme fatale in the large-scale acrylic painting. Cubist and neo-objective pictorial means help Jim Avignon to reproduce the dualistic perception that is just as characteristic of today. The figures freeze into lifeless and unrelated, interchangeable templates, some of them, like the striding woman, also give the impression of dynamism. The contrast of static and instability of the backdrop, of close-up and distant views, as well as the multi-perspectivity of the objects also have a dualistic effect. Jim Avignon is familiar with Pop Art on several levels - on the one hand through his work in advertising for Swatch, among others, and on the other hand through his Urban Art, for example his Guerilla Action during Documenta X. Jim Avignon's images are worlds. Let us experience them together.
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