Simon Lee Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Jim Shaw, his first at the London gallery since 2016. As the United States prepares for its upcoming Presidential election, Shaw is more analytical and daring than ever before in his satirical depictions and social commentary.
Shaw is celebrated for the outlandish narratives and sharp wit with which he brings his dystopian, albeit eerily familiar, universe to life. His provocative tableaux, whether sinister, comedic, or somewhere in between, are pieced together from the artist’s own imagination and his prolific collection of magazine and newspaper cut outs, posters and prints, comic books and gimmicky advertisements, which he began collecting during his teenage years in Michigan in the 1960s.
Jim Shaw In Conversation with Lydia Yee
On the occasion of Jim Shaw’s exhibition Hope Against Hope at Simon Lee Gallery, London, the artist is in conversation with Lydia Yee, the Chief Curator at Whitechapel Gallery, to discuss his new paintings which are more analytical and daring than ever before in their satirical depictions and social commentary.
Lydia Yee is Chief Curator at Whitechapel Gallery, where she recently curated Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium (2020) and Is This Tomorrow? (2019) and oversaw commissions by Ulla von Brandenburg (2018) and Leonor Antunes (2017). Yee has previously held positions in the UK and US as Curator at Barbican Art Gallery and Senior Curator at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. She was also co-curator of Frieze Talks (2018–19) and British Art Show 8 (2015–16).