Modernist in Minnesota

Rendered with characteristic graphic clarity, Modernist in Minnesota, 2009, is an exquisite work on paper from Jonas Wood. In delicate gouache and pencil, Wood has depicted a Modernist home on a wintery day, the sky a faint shade of crystal blue. The artist’s planar geometry and vivid palette have drawn comparisons with paintings by Alex Katz and David Hockney, and like his contemporaries, Wood’s subject matter is always part of his personal ecosystem: ‘I’m not going to paint something that doesn’t have anything to do with me. Of all the possible things I could paint, the thing that interests me is something that I can get close enough to in order to paint it honestly. The painters whose work means the most to me—that’s what they were painting. It was their loved ones or the stuff that was in their house. It was always this hyperpersonal thing to me. Why did van Gogh pick that landscape? It’s because it was the perfect landscape’ (J. Wood in conversation with A. Vejzovic Sharp, Interiors: Jonas Wood, exh. cat., David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, 2012, p. 56). While Wood is widely known for his jam-packed interiors, portraits and landscapes, Modernist in Minnesota remains enigmatic. Absent a clear narrative, the work resists hasty interpretation, and instead asks for contemplation and a willingness to lose oneself in the rich patterning and architectural forms.