JONAS WOOD | BW Parrot Pattern

David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2012

This work is in very good condition overall. Under close inspection, there is light evidence of handling and wear to the extreme top edge, most notably, three ¼ of an inch horizontal abrasions to the pigment, are visible at the center of the top extreme edge, as well as two similarly sized rub marks 9 inches from the top right corner a the extreme top edge. Under extremely close inspection there are a few light areas of rubbing visible on the extreme left edge, beginning 22 inches from the bottom left edge and extending to 30 inches from the bottom left edge. Under further extremely close inspection and raking light, there is a soft 1 1/2 of an inch scratch to the pigment on the extreme bottom edge visible 10 inches from the bottom right corner. Further close inspection reveals a pinpoint brown spot accretion at the very extreme of the upper right corner. Under ultraviolet light inspection, the spot accretion fluoresces brightly but is the not the result of restoration. Unframed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

"I chose to paint in this flat way because it suits me to simplify things. Even when I use shadow its flat—abstracted. There is depth, but its achieved in the simplest way. Shapes accumulate, and where they meet there is some sort of imperfection." Jonas Wood Highly variegated and complex, BW Parrot Pattern depicts Jonas Woods well known characteristics of translating the world around him into flat color and line, mystifying the expectations of scale and vantage point. Wood is admired for his depictions of ordinary environments, such as domestic interiors and landscapes, to which he applies an array of formal techniques to create viewpoints that are at odds with the viewer’s expectations. His paintings create a layered methodology where he creates a foundation by one painting appearing time after time, creating a wealth of visual information. He is constantly evolving the ways in which memory reconstructs the past.

Wood has a breadth of art historical knowledge and respect for previous artists’ accomplishments that shows through in his continually evolving oeuvre. Growing up, he was continually exposed to art by his family. “Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Calder, Monet, Vuillard, Bonnard, van Gogh, Stuart Davis, and Hockney have all been very real influences to me. When I was a young child, my family would speak about these artists as examples of greatness in painting. I guess even then I took them seriously because these are the artists I ended up fashioning my studio practice after” (the artist in conversation with Emma-Louise Tovey, “Jonas Wood,” Dossier Journal, 3 April 2012, online). BW Parrots Pattern showcase Wood’s acute attention to patterning and color, recalling the work of Henri Matisse. Both Wood and Matisse carefully delineate the patterning on each respective textile, giving them a sense of verisimilitude. In Interior with Egyptian Curtain, Matisse showcases his brilliance in painterly flatness where the work appears to float on the canvas surface due to the painting’s willful lack of shadowing, indicating no sense of physical grounding. Wood mimics Matisse's style while asserting his stature as one of the masters of contemporary art. Likening Wood’s singular artistic project to Matisse’s, art historian Ken D. Allan states: “In 1908 Henri Matisse explained, ‘The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive...Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter’s disposal to express his feelings.’ Wood’s return to such questions allows us to see that painting’s delivery of visual pleasure has a history—a history that Wood’s work surely continues” (the artist in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Exh. Cat., Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art, Jonas Wood, 2019, pp. 22-23).

In essence, BW Parrots Pattern is a figurative work that takes form as abstraction, and vice versa. Perhaps surprisingly for an artist who makes extensive use of autobiographical imagery, Wood achieves emotional impact by relying solely on the viewer's eye, and by transforming nostalgia into a network of purely visual relationships. “More than ever his works negotiate an uneasy truce among the abstract, the representational, the photographic and the just plain weird. They achieve this with a dour yet lavish palette, tactile but implacably workmanlike surfaces and a subtly perturbed sense of space in which seemingly flattened planes and shapes undergo shifts in tone and angle that continually declare their constructed, considered, carefully wrought artifice” (Roberta Smith, "Art in Review: Jonas Wood," The New York Times, 18 March 2011, online). Moreover, with its Cubist-like spatial distortion and playful planes of unmodulated color, BW Parrots luxuriates in its admixture of figuration and abstraction, testifying to Wood’s status as the heir to the great artistic masters of the past century.