Jonas Wood Flattens Daily Life in New Gagosian Exhibition

Everyday is an adventure in Jonas Wood‘s vibrant paintings. The American artist is globally recognized for flattening the banality of daily life into wondrous compositions that incorporate his passions across sports, plants and virtually any subject that piques his interest. On view at Gagosian London is a new solo exhibition of paintings that explore how Wood conflates often competing elements.

Housed at the gallery’s Grosvenor Hill location, the eponymously titled show presents some of Wood’s most chaotically patterned works to date. Wood likes to play with perspective, shifting the flattened plane of the canvas through repeating patterns, like the texture of a wall or couch, with competing colors, shapes and decorative elements, such as a distant skyline in Robot and Bear (2024) or a discreet temple shrouded by a Japanese garden he observed in Kyoto. He achieves this effect through photos that he reassembles on the canvas using oil and acrylic, much like piecing together a puzzle.

There’s an innate intimacy to viewing Wood’s work, whether overt, such as Shio, Momo, and Kiki with Leaf Masks (2024) — a painting of his wife and kids, or Miami Shade House (2024), whose verdant depictions carry a universal resonance. “These works entail a deft intermixing of subject and object,” says Gagosian, “making and staging, art and life.”

Jonas Wood will be on view in London until November 23, 2024.

Gagosian
20 Grosvenor Hill
London W1K 3QD