Exhibition
November 29 – December 29, 2018
Jacob Lawrence Gallery
Reception: Thursday, November 29, 5–8pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, December 1, 11am at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery
This exhibition shares work by UK-based artist Clotilde Jiménez. It features Jiménez's recent collages and charcoal drawings that use fruit, a traditional symbol alluding to sexuality in Western art history, to explore the constraints of sexual identity in Western culture. Using everyday and texturally rich materials such as wallpaper, images cut from magazines, and plastic bags, the collages bring pointed humor and formal rigor to the representation of the Black, queer, masculine body.
As an artist, Jiménez was inspired by Jacob Lawrence’s use of form and color to tell stories:
Jacob Lawrence was one of the few artists who showed me that it was not only possible to depict my life as a Black person in my own way but that it was also important and needed. Jacob Lawrence’s forms and color palette gave me the courage to look to my own Black American Puerto Rican roots to channel some of that essence into my work while also candidly telling my own story in the time that I live.
Artist
Clotilde Jiménez (b. Honolulu, Hawaii, 1990) is a visual artist based in London. He received his MFA in painting from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2018. In 2015, Jiménez was awarded the Nesnadny + Schwartz Visiting Curator Program by MOCA Cleveland and was the recipient of a studio visit by Naomi Beckwith, Curator at MCA Chicago. Also in 2015, Jiménez was the Artist-in-Residence at Fljóstunga, Reykholt, Iceland, and the Slade’s London Intensive. His work has featured in VICE’s The Creators Project and New American Paintings issue #125, which selected him as a noteworthy artist. Jiménez's work is featured in noted public collections, including Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; Print Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio; and The Fljótstunga Art Collection, Reykholt, Iceland.