Drawings - Canada Online Viewing Room

Canada

February 16, 2021 - March 20, 2021

60 Lispenard Street

P: 212 925 4631

New York, NY

10013

canadanewyork.com

Drawings

Jason

Fox

Detail of Jason Fox's 'You Don’t Know Me', 2020

Canada is pleased to present an online viewing room featuring new works on paper by Jason Fox. In this selection of work, Fox layers images in the manner of Jasper Johns, but rather than numbers or letters Fox employs images of pop music icons, politicians, movie monsters (Jason from the Friday the 13th movies) and a beloved pet dog. Using pencil, pen and washes of ink, the artist overlays the images of celebrated musicians with mystical beings and inhabitants of the spirit world to create idiosyncratic and revealing drawings. Fox’s unlikely juxtapositions, like combining Joni Mitchel and Joan of Arc, can seem strange or even heretical but gradually they unify and begin to feel natural. As Joni’s gaze and Joan of Arc’s trademark battle helmet fuse, they extend and complicate the image of both idols. The layered images form meanings beyond their constituent parts, as Fox sacrifices cultural heroes on the altar of transformation and rebirth, questioning the assumed meanings of these icons.

Fox’s process is consistently diverse, ranging from loose definitions and accidents reminiscent of Joseph Beuys’ drawings to more defined allusions of mannerism ranging from the drawings of Jacopo Pontormo to Georg Baselitz and Jack Kirby. This method produces results that are powerful both metaphorically and materially, as the doubled image creates surprises for the viewer and the artist alike. While the drawings contain flows of watercolor and moments of quick gestural marks, Fox is a skilled and considerate draftsman. His attention to the quality of the line and his effort to make the drawings emote narrative force is at the heart of his output, but at the same time, there is a constant anarchy bubbling up in the drawings that disrupt any real attempt at illustration, recalling artists like Jean Michel Basquiat and Joe Bradley. In the end, Fox always returns to his particular experience; his formal experimentation is animated by his desire to reimagine culture through his personal lens.

Jason Fox (b. 1964, Yonkers, New York) has exhibited with Canada, New York since 2014. He has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2020), Almine Rech Gallery, Brussels (2018) and CANADA, New York (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Samaritans, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, New York (2019); Animal Farm, Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, Connecticut (2017); Rien faire et laisser rire, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels (2013); among others. Fox lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York.

A monograph on Fox’s drawings is forthcoming in 2021, published by Canada.