Jim Isermann
Selected Works
Press Release
Miles McEnery Gallery is pleased to present Build, California-based artist Jim Isermann’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition is on view 19 February through 28 March 2026 at 511 West 22nd Street. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by Jesse Dorris.
Build presents sixteen works by Isermann, whose process combines meticulous planning with the deliberate presence of the hand. The palpable architectural influence in Isermann’s latest paintings is evident through carefully executed straight lines, subtle shifts in hue performing as depth, and recognizable geometric frameworks. The new body of work’s advanced dimensionality and a departure from Isermann’s pure patterning style. While patterning remains central to Isermann’s practice, functioning as both formal armature and conceptual device.
His signature rainbow-based palette engages histories of queer formalist abstraction and both the Mid-Century and Post Modern design movements, while transforming color into an architectural element. The work engages Op Art and hard-edge painting through crisp contours, high-contrast chromatics, and interlocking planes that activate optical vibrations. Up close, a brick-by-brick logic emerges; from a distance, reflective grids suggest multi-storied architectural façades.
Isermann’s engagement with architecture has long extended beyond the canvas. His work frequently expands into architecturally scaled installations and public commissions; Recent projects include a 114-foot mural Never Turn Your Back On The Ocean (2025) at UC San Diego, and a permanent Palm Springs Pride Monument. As Dorris writes, “These new paintings from Jim Isermann refit a body of work that has already read a rainbow into dreary straight minimalism…turning toward direct reference, with parenthetical allusions to the architects whose achievements Isermann is, here, modeling.” From painting to works on public plinths, Isermann’s vision remains consistently attuned to structure.
Jim Isermann (b. 1955 in Kenosha, WI) received his Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, CA and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in Milwaukee, WI.
Isermann’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Camden Arts Center, London, United Kingdom; Corvi-Mora, London, United Kingdom; Deitch Projects, New York, NY; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Pacific Design Center Design Gallery, West Hollywood, CA; Palm Springs Art Museum, Architecture and Design Center, Palm Springs, CA; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, among others. Recent public art projects include Never Turn Your Back On The Ocean, a two-sided mural, University of California San Diego, in partnership with Murals of La Jolla, La Jolla, CA; Palm Spring Pride Monument, permanent monument, Palm Springs, CA; and Petit Five, seating modules, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, among many others.
He has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY; Le Magasin - Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; 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, among others.
His work may be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY; FRAC Poitou-Charentes, Angoulême, France; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Menil Collection, Houston, TX; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, and elsewhere.
The artist lives and works in Palm Springs, CA.
