The artist’s latest presentation, Between the flowers and the birds (2020-2021), is comprised of ten works on paper that function both as a unified series and as discrete art objects unto themselves. Rendered in gold leaf and individuated by way of gestural marks, folds, and delicate lengths of gold chain, each example serves as both a record of itself, and a reminder that the fragment always remembers the whole. 

Adhering to Hodges’ signature visual vocabulary, the abstract surfaces of these compositions celebrate the poetry of the familiar: natural sylvan silhouettes comingle with man-made camouflage; creases and pencil markings suggest rays of light breaking through clouds; incised surfaces indicate separation while simultaneously defying loss. Replete with the emotional narratives and diaristic qualities that have long served as the cornerstone of Hodges’ practice, the drawings that comprise Between the flowers and the birds offer themselves as quiet sites of contemplation in which we might consider absence and presence, moments of pause that remind us that lines of kinship remain stalwart even in the face of distance and time. 

Jim Hodges was born in 1957 in Spokane, Washington, and lives and works in New York. His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions including: the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Camden Art Centre, London; the Aspen Art Museum; CGAC, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Most recently a major traveling retrospective of Hodges’s work was exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Dallas Museum of Art; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. The artist recently unveiled the work I dreamed a world and called it love, a monumentally scaled installation commissioned by the MTA and permanently installed in New York’s iconic Grand Central Station. Hodges has received multiple awards and grants including the Association International des Critiques d’art, the Albert Ucross Prize, Washington State Arts Commission, and the Penny McCall Foundation Grant.