- 5
Jonas Wood
bidding is closed
Description
- Jonas Wood
- French Open I
- signed, titled and dated 2011 on the reverse
- oil and acrylic on linen
- 240 by 160cm.; 94 1/2 by 63in.
Provenance
Patrick De Brock Gallery, Knokke
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2011
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2011
Catalogue Note
Jonas Wood’s paintings record the artist’s everyday; his studio, his friends and family, his wife’s work – she is also an artist and they both share a studio – and anything that he sees that catches his eye. The Los Angeles-based artist, however, doesn’t paint from life as these imagery sources might suggest. His process is rather one of sketching from memory, looking at photographs or even at his TV screen, and amalgamating all these different source materials into a final composition. At times Wood will even quote himself; his studio paintings are full of his own finished canvases or works in progress, and he will often use old drawings or paintings as a departure point for new works.
Bold colours and flat expanses of paint populate Wood’s work, and have frequently garnered him comparison to Matisse’s geometric use of the picture plane or Hockney’s photographic experiments and particular figurative style. The artist, who indeed cites both as influences, shares with the painters a singular understanding of perspective and colour, as well as the inclination to turn to what is closest to him for inspiration, imbuing his works with a sense of familiarity and intimacy that is both appealing yet strangely ambiguous.
Besides close family and friends, his studio and his wife’s pottery, a series of motifs that appear regularly in Wood’s canvases are images related to sports, ranging from basketball players and matches to reproductions of baseball cards or even tennis courts. The latter, in fact, appear in a series of works from 2011-12 of the Grand Slam tournament, in which Wood reproduced the familiar enclosures of Paris, London, New York and Melbourne. In these works, flat blocks of vibrant reds, blues and greens contrast against the dark backgrounds where the names of the sponsors of each tournament can be read. The tennis courts, devoid of players, referees or audience, turn into quasi-abstract landscapes; the focus is here on the rectangles of strong colour, creating the sense of expectation that builds up before each of the matches in the competition. Belonging to this series, French Open, 2011, depicts the central clay court at Roland Garros, a tournament that Wood must have watched on TV. Here, the striking red hue the artist used to paint the tennis court stands out and vibrates, filling an otherwise geometric composition with life and movement. Art-critic Cecilia Alemani accurately describes how “it is an absolutely personal ballet of realism and abstraction that Wood performs: a heightened form of perception that turns figurative painting into a peculiar form of disfiguration. It’s color field painting by the way of Le Douanier Rousseau” (Cecilia Alemani in: Anton Kern Gallery, Ed., Jonas Wood: Sports Book, New York 2008, p. 5).
It is only normal that Wood, a self-confessed sports fan, turns to sports as source material for his work. Sports are part of his everyday, and are part of the endless library of memories that feed his imagination. As with many of his other works – be it portraits of friends or family or landscapes – there is a sense of nostalgia to French Open; one that relates it to his entire oeuvre and that gives the viewer a glimpse into Wood’s personal territory.
Bold colours and flat expanses of paint populate Wood’s work, and have frequently garnered him comparison to Matisse’s geometric use of the picture plane or Hockney’s photographic experiments and particular figurative style. The artist, who indeed cites both as influences, shares with the painters a singular understanding of perspective and colour, as well as the inclination to turn to what is closest to him for inspiration, imbuing his works with a sense of familiarity and intimacy that is both appealing yet strangely ambiguous.
Besides close family and friends, his studio and his wife’s pottery, a series of motifs that appear regularly in Wood’s canvases are images related to sports, ranging from basketball players and matches to reproductions of baseball cards or even tennis courts. The latter, in fact, appear in a series of works from 2011-12 of the Grand Slam tournament, in which Wood reproduced the familiar enclosures of Paris, London, New York and Melbourne. In these works, flat blocks of vibrant reds, blues and greens contrast against the dark backgrounds where the names of the sponsors of each tournament can be read. The tennis courts, devoid of players, referees or audience, turn into quasi-abstract landscapes; the focus is here on the rectangles of strong colour, creating the sense of expectation that builds up before each of the matches in the competition. Belonging to this series, French Open, 2011, depicts the central clay court at Roland Garros, a tournament that Wood must have watched on TV. Here, the striking red hue the artist used to paint the tennis court stands out and vibrates, filling an otherwise geometric composition with life and movement. Art-critic Cecilia Alemani accurately describes how “it is an absolutely personal ballet of realism and abstraction that Wood performs: a heightened form of perception that turns figurative painting into a peculiar form of disfiguration. It’s color field painting by the way of Le Douanier Rousseau” (Cecilia Alemani in: Anton Kern Gallery, Ed., Jonas Wood: Sports Book, New York 2008, p. 5).
It is only normal that Wood, a self-confessed sports fan, turns to sports as source material for his work. Sports are part of his everyday, and are part of the endless library of memories that feed his imagination. As with many of his other works – be it portraits of friends or family or landscapes – there is a sense of nostalgia to French Open; one that relates it to his entire oeuvre and that gives the viewer a glimpse into Wood’s personal territory.