Jim Hodges

During a flight from LA to New York, Jim Hodges decided that once back in his studio, he would break a mirror. He did, creating No Dust, 1996, the first of what would become, in an increasingly nuanced approach, many broken mirror works. This direction in his practice firmly cemented his approach to creation as one of reconsideration of materials through their disassembly only to rebuild, to see things anew. “Give More Than You Take” is Hodges first major museum survey and reflects more than 25 years of artistic production by this under-considered powerhouse of the poetic gesture. In the absolutely necessary publication accompanying this touring exhibition, co-curators Jeffrey Grove and Olga Viso refer to Hodges’s lack of engagement with art-world trends in the 1980s and ’90s, including Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Geo, the Pictures Generation and their use of appropriation. Though it must be noted that Hodges’s use of found material as well as everyday objects feels just as political. Grove and Viso are intent on showing he is no lone maverick when they link him to his close friends Roni Horn and Felix Gonzales-Torres, for whom No Dust was done in memoriam.

Though his career, as it dovetailed with the advent of the AIDS crisis-turned-pandemic, has been beset by easy reads toward mourning and desire, it is very difficult not to feel a wistful sting while strolling through the galleries of the Walker Art Center. Whether it is a pair of iconic Levi’s jeans and Hanes white briefs that looked stepped out of, left on the floor next to a t-shirt, shoes and socks, with a spiderweb of white brass chain spun from the fabric to the wall (what’s left, 1992) or the vine of artificial flowers achingly snaking its way from the ground upwards (a line to you, 1994), a dense layering of vintage ladies’ scarves in powerful and moody blues, pinks, oranges (With the Wind, 1997), or the precision of two overlapping concentric circles in complimentary hues of pale blue and pink drawn directly on the gallery wall so faintly many might not notice, so ephemeral as to be smudged or erased with a slight callous gesture (He and I, 1998), practically each piece drips with a speculative and imprecise melancholy. When Hodges tackles a symbol that has been around since before Shakespeare, and lays bare its artifice through disassembly, as he does with Changing Things, 1997, we can understand it for what it is—plastic and silk petals—but more importantly for what it can represent—a stand-in for so many other instances that identify us but keep us apart: a geography, a road map, a discourse, a collapse.

Wandering slowly from one work to the next, I’m momentarily duped into thinking there is a sense of play in Hodges’s approach. Untitled (Near and Far), 2002, is comprised of shattered rectangular mirror in 24 parts that are affixed to the wall at standard museum height. The shards however are brought back together in such a way that the periphery is a mere suggestion of what it once was, leaving the middle missing, denying my reflection, denying a grounding point or reference, reflecting other work behind me, but also underlining loss. In a physical echo, the dark gate, 2008, both lures you in and blinds you by calling on your other senses, namely smell. In this closed off, darkened room installation, swinging doors lead to a 8’ by 8’ by 8’ environment lit by a bare bulb. The focal point is a grid of steel spikes whose sharp points outline a perfect circle, emulating something like a torture device or perhaps a sunburst. It is only when you lean in close enough to the negative space created by the steel spikes that you smell Shalimar perfume, which was what the artist’s mother wore. There is an additional scent—apparently what the artist wore at that time. Between these two works there is MOVEMENTS (Stages I–IV), 2005–2009, a series of mirrors precisely deconstructed into tiny squares and then reassembled in organic bulbous forms that hug the architecture, especially its corners. These silver monochromatic mosaics reflect the light in subtle but dynamic ways so as to question the true point of view. I found myself thinking of Plato’s cave, wondering if I’m looking at the object or its shadow/reflection. The clarity of these cut squares blur as the cast light/shadow/reflection expands or spills further; what is a perfect beam of light becomes a loose web, a mirage. The best artists force us to reconsider our positions, so perhaps there is room for playfulness, beauty and obfuscation when thinking of mourning, loss and desire. It is the subtle dichotomies that propel Hodges’s work. In his essay, Grove notes that beauty and vulgarity inhabit every material the artist touches.

Viso similarly states Hodges’s “alchemy profoundly transforms rather ordinary materials and temporal artifacts of culture into extraordinary objects of reflection and contemplation.” Nowhere is this truer than with the mural-sized patchwork assembly made from salvaged silk, nylon and painted chiffon scarves (Here’s where we’ll stay, 1995) that acts as a visual elegy. Flag-like, yet non-monumental in its fragile nature, this work commands attention through its softness as it drapes down the wall and ever so gently gathers along the floor. A fluid joining of rectangles, squares, solid colours and geometric patterns, this soft sculpture is apparently an ode to the artist’s mother and grandmother, who taught him to sew. Its sheer fabrics that bleed into translucence, the letter “F” embroidered into a corner calling up memories, and its cascading installation might just herald a collapse of time itself.

The work in “Give More than You Take” whispers. Even when comprised of millennia-old boulders with colourful stainless steel lacquer affixed to their sides (Untitled, 2011), it doesn’t boast, there is no spectacle on which so much current art relies; it rubs, kneads and whispers its truth to you. It seems almost antithetical to write a review of a Jim Hodges exhibition. If I were to take his poignant, exploratory reconsideration of materials and systems to heart, I’d breathe my thoughts into a balloon and release it over the midwestern sky. Or, craft a paper boat out of my jottings and float it down the Mississippi River, only to have the ink wash away, my thoughts, my words, coalescing some place where they might just reach the artist. ❚

“Give More Than You Take” was exhibited at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, from February 15 to May 11, 2014.

J.J. Kegan McFadden is an independent curator who writes about art.