Jim Hodges

Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Paris, Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Jim Hodges, September - October 1997

This work is in very good condition overall. The surface is clean and fresh. There are artists pinholes at the corners. Unframed.
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As an artist, Jim Hodges, embarks on an investigation of memory, time and space. The intimate objects he produces often conjure mixed emotions of nostalgia and enchantment while drawing on themes of the past. In This Place (1997), Hodges presents the viewer with a diptych of two truncated ligneous fragments with offshoot branches extending in every which way. The viewer cannot help but be confronted by the relationship between the two branches as they exist detached from one another but seem to somehow grow towards each other longingly. The magnetism of the lateral extensions recalls the tension one feels when viewing the elongated fingertip of the outstretched arm of God meeting the extended hand of Adam, in Michelangelo's celebrated Creation of Adam (c. 1511) in the Sistine Chapel.

 

Hodges' title, This Place, demarcates a specific, fixed site, but also connotes a feeling of intimacy; it is "this" place, not "that" place. Likewise, by virtue of installing the work on a wall, it is contemporary interpretation of crowning a wood-burning fireplace with the head of a reindeer with antlers in your home. The severed antler-like branches function as a memento mori, evoking the past by inducing the viewer to wonder where they come from. While the origin of the branches remains mysterious, this work encapsulates the tenets of Hodges' iconic work: nostalgia, intimacy and emotion.