JIM ISERMANN

Miles McEnery Gallery is pleased to present Jim Isermann’s inaugural solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition is on view 8 June through 22 July 2023 at 525 West 22nd Street. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by Tausif Noor.

The exhibition presents a series of ten CNC milled works by Isermann, divided into one suite of six and two sets of pairs. Geometric patterns are mathematically calculated and cut with finite precision, then hand painted in a unifying palette of red, yellow, green, and blue. Isermann hones in on the element of the handmade, allowing wavering lines and pools of pigment to gather in the crevices. The resulting paintings offer a visual contrast between mechanic perfection and manual imperfection.

Over the course of his four decade career, Isermann has developed a multi-faceted practice that amalgamates concepts of Bauhaus utilitarianism, the American Arts and Crafts Movement, and queer formalist abstraction. He employs logical repetition of pattern, reduction, and palette to underline traditions of minimalism and hard edge abstraction, while simultaneously disrupting notions of fine art by bridging the work into the space of domestic functionalism.

Built upon his own identity, Isermann’s paintings put forth a personal conception of artistic values that are “always attuned to the multimodal and multisensory conditions of the space and who and what populates it,” Noor writes, “Isermann’s radical gesture is not only the domestic setting, but the players and parts within that setting that make it—life—not only livable, but hospitable.”

Jim Isermann (b. 1955, Kenosha, WI) received his Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Isermann’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Camden Arts Center, London, United Kingdom; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; Le Magasin - Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Center, Palm Springs, CA; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, among others.

He has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Royal Academy of Art, London, United Kingdom; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY.

His work may be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; FRAC Poitou-Charentes, Angoulême, France; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, and elsewhere.

The artist lives and works in Palm Springs, CA.

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Selected Works

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