Jonas Wood’s highly patterned and flattened paintings take up all four gallery rooms at David Kordansky Gallery. Evoking the decorative arts, their inherently “attractive” quality reminds one of a painted mosaic. Wood created this affect by using deliberate linear brushstrokes atop flattened fields of opaque colors, to create a highly ornamented painted surface. The result is work that feels more along the lines of tapestry than paintings. Although the paintings are playful in character, the stylization and methodical application remove any semblance of expressivity from the paintings, leaving no room for error and nothing at stake.
As the name of the show suggests, the content of the paintings largely focuses on “Plants and Animals” inhabiting the domestic living spaces of the bourgeoisie. The point-of-view of the paintings are from inside or outside affluent architecture. The general feeling is too comfortable and well-situated to feel voyeuristic—and ends up suggesting the social status of Wood himself. Unlike the Post-Impressionist genre that the paintings are referring to through his compositions (homage to printmaking and flattened patterned brushwork à la Gaugin or Matisse), Wood’s paintings do not feel like they are painted for fellow painters, but rather for his established collectors.
Jonas Wood, Deer and Picasso, 2019, oil and acrylic on canvas
Allusions to high living and designer tastes are frequently dispersed within the pictures. Privileged pastimes are hinted at, for example the painting Deer and Picasso from 2019, feature a Picasso painting on the wall, a pet deer lounging on a wicker sofa and a SURFER magazine atop a coffee table in the foreground. In the painting Patterned Interior with Mar Vista View (2020) the painted plants are ripe, alive and full with saturated colors. The mirthful pattern of the drapery and sofa create a visual kinetic energy that buzzes above the picture plane. This painting—like many others in the show—use an opened window motif; the paintings themselves are like open windows into a fabricated LA paradise, accessible only to the happy wealthy people that will in-turn own these happy expensive paintings.
Jonas Wood: Plants and Animals
January 22 – March 5, 2022
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