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Lot Essay
“Mr. Wood paints the artist’s life that happens to be his own…In Mr. Wood’s case it includes the hallway leading to his studio, a stack of birdcages stored in a corner somewhere (occasionally a riotous extravagance of parallel lines) and a large cluster of incised ceramic vessels, suffused in a weirdly palpable gray light, by the artist Shio Kusaka, to whom Mr. Wood is married” – Roberta Smith
(R. Smith, “Art in Review: Jonas Wood.” The New York Times, March 17, 2011.)
Jonas Wood’s 2 Birds at Night, 2013, celebrates the artist’s signature graphic style while aligning itself in the surrealist manner of quotidian objects where nothing is quite as it seems. The oversized bird cage and bizarre staging of the house at night is emphasized by Wood’s use of absolute negative space, an inky black, which displaces the normative proportions of the scene. An artist known for his carefully detailed interiors and meticulously rendered still life work, Wood here demonstrates his sure handling of space, a remarkable flourish of architectural skill which builds both the world within the bird cage and the one surrounding.
Wood started to work with the bird cage motif in 2010, a gouache work on paper showing a jumble of animal cages: the bird cages at the forefront juxtaposed with larger stacked pet cages in the background. The delicate bars of a cage lend themselves well to Wood’s graphic detailing, which simultaneously creates density in form and lets space bleed through. The cage creates a semi-transparent screen, cleverly allowing Wood to control how light or color permeate. In 2011, Wood continued to explore the cage motif by adding two colorful birds into the cage, as seen with 2 Caged Birds, 2011, and Untitled (2 Yellow Birds), 2011. In both of these examples, two birds of vibrant coloring creat new three-dimensionality to the cage and establish the artist’s technical sophistication given his often commented upon ability to flatten space. Here, Wood proves he can build as well as remove space, forging whirling iron cages that simultaneously carry weight and the functionality to contain, while being airy and open.
The present work, made two years later in 2013, builds upon this theme of the pair of birds but, rarely for the artist, places them in a distinct time: night. Two birds of tropical color cling to the bars of a looming bird cage, the bright colors of their plumage and the surrounding decorative objects unnaturally emanating from the darkness. The cage is built in two parts, a smaller barn-shaped cage perches perpendicularly on the larger base. Upon closer examination, the cage does not make structural sense. The sharp line of the roof distorts whether the birds are able to access the upper part, and the whole crisscross of bars overlap one another to deconstruct the structure of the cage; a “riotous extravagance”. Such illusions are further reinforced by the deliberate similarity between the bird feeder and the two blue squares in the background, perhaps windows to the night sky, collapsing the figuration into abstraction. Wood’s night scene, with its impossible coloring and fractured structuring, warps what first appears a recognizable scene into something quite unfamiliar.
Further testimony to Wood’s technical skill is seen in the speckled floor, composed of minute flecks in greens and blues, that shimmers and works as a semi-transparent layer to the scene. As with the bird cage, there is a sense that something is not quite right. The white structure appears to be supporting a terracotta pot, which is partly shielded by a long, leafy palm. Upon closer inspection, it is not clear where the plant begins or ends; it creeps up the side of the bird cage, emerging out of harshly defined shadow and undermining the logical structure of the picture. These absurdist details liken Wood’s work to the tradition of Cubist-like spatial distortion: “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 which seemingly flattened planes and shapes undergo shifts in tone and angle that continually declare their constructed, considered, carefully wrought artifice.” (R. Smith, “Art in Review: Jonas Wood.” The New York Times, March 17, 2011).
(R. Smith, “Art in Review: Jonas Wood.” The New York Times, March 17, 2011.)
Jonas Wood’s 2 Birds at Night, 2013, celebrates the artist’s signature graphic style while aligning itself in the surrealist manner of quotidian objects where nothing is quite as it seems. The oversized bird cage and bizarre staging of the house at night is emphasized by Wood’s use of absolute negative space, an inky black, which displaces the normative proportions of the scene. An artist known for his carefully detailed interiors and meticulously rendered still life work, Wood here demonstrates his sure handling of space, a remarkable flourish of architectural skill which builds both the world within the bird cage and the one surrounding.
Wood started to work with the bird cage motif in 2010, a gouache work on paper showing a jumble of animal cages: the bird cages at the forefront juxtaposed with larger stacked pet cages in the background. The delicate bars of a cage lend themselves well to Wood’s graphic detailing, which simultaneously creates density in form and lets space bleed through. The cage creates a semi-transparent screen, cleverly allowing Wood to control how light or color permeate. In 2011, Wood continued to explore the cage motif by adding two colorful birds into the cage, as seen with 2 Caged Birds, 2011, and Untitled (2 Yellow Birds), 2011. In both of these examples, two birds of vibrant coloring creat new three-dimensionality to the cage and establish the artist’s technical sophistication given his often commented upon ability to flatten space. Here, Wood proves he can build as well as remove space, forging whirling iron cages that simultaneously carry weight and the functionality to contain, while being airy and open.
The present work, made two years later in 2013, builds upon this theme of the pair of birds but, rarely for the artist, places them in a distinct time: night. Two birds of tropical color cling to the bars of a looming bird cage, the bright colors of their plumage and the surrounding decorative objects unnaturally emanating from the darkness. The cage is built in two parts, a smaller barn-shaped cage perches perpendicularly on the larger base. Upon closer examination, the cage does not make structural sense. The sharp line of the roof distorts whether the birds are able to access the upper part, and the whole crisscross of bars overlap one another to deconstruct the structure of the cage; a “riotous extravagance”. Such illusions are further reinforced by the deliberate similarity between the bird feeder and the two blue squares in the background, perhaps windows to the night sky, collapsing the figuration into abstraction. Wood’s night scene, with its impossible coloring and fractured structuring, warps what first appears a recognizable scene into something quite unfamiliar.
Further testimony to Wood’s technical skill is seen in the speckled floor, composed of minute flecks in greens and blues, that shimmers and works as a semi-transparent layer to the scene. As with the bird cage, there is a sense that something is not quite right. The white structure appears to be supporting a terracotta pot, which is partly shielded by a long, leafy palm. Upon closer inspection, it is not clear where the plant begins or ends; it creeps up the side of the bird cage, emerging out of harshly defined shadow and undermining the logical structure of the picture. These absurdist details liken Wood’s work to the tradition of Cubist-like spatial distortion: “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 which seemingly flattened planes and shapes undergo shifts in tone and angle that continually declare their constructed, considered, carefully wrought artifice.” (R. Smith, “Art in Review: Jonas Wood.” The New York Times, March 17, 2011).