Jim Shaw

Fabrice Stroun

Noëllie Roussel

"A long awaited survey of Jim Shaw's career from 1974 to the present, showcasing his obsessive cultural cataloging and the depth of his colorful, eccentric interior world. From the massive 170 piece multimedia work, My Mirage, which traces the roller coaster life of a whitebread American named Billy, to Thrift Store Paintings, Shaw's highly individualized ""outsider"" perspective, mixing contemporary art discourse with mainstream American culture has established Jim Shaw as a seminal figure. Interview by Mike Kelley."

Everything Must Go, 1974-1999

He knew he wasn't gonna get there on time. He'd gotten away to late and had been held up by one too many red lights. He pressed down hard on the accelerator. Even if there was only a slim chance he could make it there before night fall, he'd take it. It had to be done. He promised her... He promised he would avenge her, or die trying.

Cast Shadows

Secrets of the Damned

Edited by Lionel Bovier and Fabrice Stroun. Essays by Yves Aupetitallot, Doug Harvey and Nadia Schneider.

My Mirage (1986 - 1991) is the first major body of work by Jim Shaw, an artist from Los Angeles who started exhibiting in the late 1970s.Composed of nearly 170 pieces - each one drawn, silk-screened, photographed, sculpted, filmed or painted in a different style - My Mirage recounts the wandering of Billy, a white, middle-class American sucked into the whirlwind of the 1960s and 1970s. His is a story of unceasing failure. After an anxious childhood, Billy later withdraws from the guilt-wracked spasms of adolescence in order to lose himself in a psychedelic utopia, which soon becomes a nightmare. In the depth of psychotic hallucinations, he follows a woman who he worships into a pagan sect, before finally returning to the religion of his youth, 'reborn' as a fundamentalist Christian.From the onset of the series, My Mirage has been constructed with the idea of the book as model. Not only does the overarching narrative take the form of a coming of age novel, but many of the individual pieces make direct reference to a book format. Created in close collaboration with Jim Shaw, the book thus presents itself as the culmination of the artist's original project. My Mirage — The Book will allow Jim Shaw's ever-growing audience to look at the whole of Billy's story for the first time. Furthermore, its format and content should appeal to a wide readership, beyond contemporary art, which includes anyone interested in the history of the counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s, American graphic design and popular illustration.

Jim Shaw

Books

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