After I visited Surrealist at Tibor de Nagy, Jimmy Gordon’s debut New York exhibition, I did some analysis to study extra about who the artist was. The press launch informed me: “Gordon (1947–2022) was born in Lexington, Kentucky,” his “work [were] created between the Nineteen Nineties to the mid-2000s,” and he had an “alter ego, whom he named La Jimberly” and generally lived in that persona for “weeks and months at a time. Throughout these occasions, he at all times signed his paintings Jimberly somewhat than Gordon.”
I affiliate Lexington with a technology of artists who first gained consideration within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, together with the Catholic monk and author Thomas Merton, who lived on the Abbey of Gethsemani (close to Lexington) and was a buddy of Advert Reinhardt; polymath author and translator Man Davenport, who taught on the College of Kentucky; autodidact photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard; photographer Man Mendes, who, together with poets Roger Manley and Jonathan Williams, chronicled his highway journeys throughout the Southern United States, introducing readers to a variety of self-taught artists, vernacular structure, and native sights; and environmental activist and farmer Wendell Berry.
I’ve questioned if the aura of this nexus of iconoclasts vanished when lots of its outstanding figures died. Had been others related to this group, nevertheless tangentially, who by no means gained recognition? Did equally attention-grabbing teams exist that acquired overshadowed? Gordon appeared to be each related to this older technology, due to his curiosity in surrealism mixed along with his fluid identification, and separate from them as a result of his work wasn’t as visually refined as theirs. This doesn’t make his work much less compelling, notably these impressed by his time working for a circus in Sarasota, Florida. They need to simply be understood otherwise.
After doing two excursions of responsibility in the course of the Vietnam Conflict, Gordon obtained his BFA from the College of Kentucky, the place he studied with artist Henry Faulkner. Faulkner was recognized for his brightly coloured, fanciful work of topics reminiscent of a unicorn wanting in a mirror and making use of make-up. Tennessee Williams was his shut buddy and was rumored to be his lover. In response to his Wikipedia web page, he was a pioneer of Kentucky’s LGBTQ+ scene within the mid twentieth century and generally wearing drag for weeks. He grew to become a neighborhood legend in Lexington, and within the late Nineteen Forties, he lived in New York with Thomas Painter and Kentucky native Edward Melcarth, an overtly homosexual artist who included Renaissance strategies in work that commemorate masculinity. The connection between Melcarth, Faulker, and Gordon suggests the porousness of Lexington’s society and the totally different, overlapping social circles they moved in, as they got here from vastly totally different monetary and academic strata. On the identical time, the unconventional variations within the teams’ model, subject material, and strategies are revelatory.
Six of the present’s 15 work (all however one in frames made by the artist) reference the circus and touring sideshow acts. In “HERMAPHRODITE: ALIVE” (c. 1999–2002) and “BEARDED WOMAN: ALIVE” (2002), Gordon’s fascination with fluid identification and sexuality is obvious. He based mostly his compositions on circus posters, which incorporate the body. The curtains have been pulled again to disclose the determine or figures in an remoted state. Stylistically, the artist focuses on the physique’s pose, somewhat than the face. By together with the title within the portray, he emphasizes the characters’ public identities as what isolates them from mainstream society and, because the curtains indicate, defines them as a voyeuristic curiosity. Along with his claw-like fingers and ft, the younger boy in “LOBSTER BOY,” sitting in entrance of his jacks sport, is intestine wrenching to see as a result of his isolation feels full and inescapable. In these work, that are very distinct from Faulkner’s whimsical works, Gordon discovered his most enduring topic.
The 9 remaining work, for which the exhibition is presumably titled, convey the affect of Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico. What saves them from turning into spinoff is Gordon’s addition of quirky or surprising particulars — as an illustration, the bust on the desk in “THE LAPWING KNOWS” (undated) has pointed ears and inexperienced haired styled to imitate a mohawk or the ornament on an Athenian battle helmet, whereas alien craft are seen by way of what seems to be like a window above a desk holding weird gadgets in “DYNAMITE Nonetheless Life” (2008). In these and some different works, Gordon’s imaginative and prescient of social actuality as populated by these estranged from it comes shining by way of.
Jimmy Gordon: Surrealist continues at Tibor de Nagy (11 Rivington Avenue, Decrease East Aspect, Manhattan) by way of October 12. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.