Samuel Levi Jones
Samuel Levi Jones Single Shots – Marie Hazard Single Shots – Exhibition Views
Jones addresses the authority and antiquated position that encyclopedic and institutional books and volumes have held as a source of information throughout history. This material, that once held definitive authorship on history, is manipulated through modes of sculpture, collage and painting to re-examine history itself and draw attention to figures, events, and triumphs of those often overlooked in written accounts – individuals of color and women. Through a process of breaking apart the books, deleting their pages and texts and re-structuring the material, Jones creates a clean slate for the insertion of a new and updated revision of history.
An anthropological approach is at the core of Jones’ practice. While the abstraction of the work is arrived at through a physical process of erasure and deconstruction, Jones allows for the qualities of the original material, its colors, textures and physical attributes, to have a voice in the direction the work is created. The historical provenance of the material is the ideal foundation for a process that is looking to expand and reexamine moments of deficiency. Quite timely in relation to current events, a major focus of the work on view is made of repurposed law case study books.
Bio:
Samuel Levi Jones was born and raised in Marion, Indiana. Trained as a photographer and multidisciplinary artist, he earned a B.A. in Communication Studies from Taylor University and a B.F.A from Herron School of Art and Design in 2009. He received his MFA in Studio Art from Mills College in 2012. His work is informed by historical source material and early modes of representation in documentary practice. He explores the framing of power structures and struggles between exclusion and equality by desecrating historical material, then re-imagining new works. Jones investigates issues of manipulation and the rejection of control in a broad sense. He is the recipient of the 2014 Joyce Alexander Wein artist prize awarded to him by the Studio Museum in Harlem. His work is in prominent private and public collections including SF MOMA, The Rubell Family Collection, LACMA, and the Studio Museum in Harlem to name a few.