Dorothy Circus Gallery proudly presents the first European solo show by Erik Jones, American artist from St. Petersburg, Florida, who stands out as one of the most innovative and successful painters of the New York hyper-contemporary art scene.
The show created by Jones expressly for Dorothy Circus Gallery features a brand new body of works that, thanks to its vibrant and highly colourful character, is able to put the Italian and European public in touch with the kaleidoscopic New York Art Life.
In Jones’ art, the heightened sense of realism, captured in his female subjects depicted by the artist, is juxtaposed with a structure of elaborated nonrepresentational forms that could be said to mimic geometric high-end fashion. This effect is achieved by using multiple mediums such as watercolour, coloured pencil, acrylic, water-soluble wax pastel and water-soluble oil applied on paper.
The sweet but determined looks of Jones’ characters emerge from a hurricane of colours, which seem to contrast with the serious and sometimes melancholic looks of these women. While their bodies are often concealed behind the numerous patterns of colours, their eyes always stress their strong presence; the ladies’ looks create a visual connection with the beholders, almost as if inviting them to join their infinite space, where no blank space is allowed. These human beings, depicted as hyper-realistic figurations preciously nestled against geometric motives and original artistic outbursts, seem to live and breathe as symbiotic organisms. Abstract forms become alive by establishing a deep and intricate relationship with the figurative subject, as if the one wore the other, becoming virtually indivisible from one another.
Jones’ portraits are dazzling celebrations of beauty exhibited with elegant bouquets of colour, which dress the figures within through a rediscovered sacredness and romanticism. The body of work may look like a dreamlike parallel universe but, as the artist himself states, his creations are not dreams; they exist in front of the viewer, placed on canvases and paper with skill and thoughtful reverie, as if looking at a real living being.
For his first solo show in Europe, Jones will exhibit more than fifteen artworks that revoke the incredible strength of the most important dripping paintings from the fifties. Erik Jones stands as a unique representative of Pop Surrealism that, while keeping faith to its roots, reaches out to encompass in his works the typical features of abstract art. The figurative never dwells alone in the scene, but it intertwines and melds with the extraordinary colours that fill the space. Jones learned carefully the lessons of past Action Painting masters, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, but he pushed his art beyond such heritage, in a hyper-contemporary field where figures, geometric and abstract shapes co-exist and create an outstanding collection of artworks.
