Tim Jag at Melanee Cooper Gallery

Saturday, 13 May 2006 07:35

Chicago, IL - Melanee Cooper Gallery features the work of artist Tim Jag.  His acrylic paintings are a mixture of vibrant patterns and colors against a background of grids and shapes.  Jag draws inspiration from industrial design and “pop” culture, where his visual elements originate from a wide range of sources, from the hardware store to the produce department.  His arrangement of these visual elements on the canvas act as a metaphor, showing the ways in which culture organizes and builds upon itself.

Tim Jag received his MFA in painting from Montana State University and has exhibited his work throughout the country, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the San Jose Museum of Art.  Reviews of his work can be found in Art Papers, ArtWeek Magazine and the Los Angeles Times.

"Having an affinity for industrial design and pop culture, I find visual resources as random as the produce department at a supermarket, dated textiles and paper, beat-up billboards, highway signs and symbols or the design of a magazine ad.  Technically, my process includes the use of aggressive scribbling, patterned fabrics, decorative papers, inks, symmetrical drawing, scratching, and mark making, and painterly characteristics such as color contrast, plasticity, gravity, tool or application choice.  With this in mind, I want my paintings to specifically the way architecture and industrial design separates us from the organic world.  As such, symmetrical organizing has become a central issue in my painting process. Formally, these paintings strive for balance between flat space against depth, pattern against field; they strive for that analogy of humanities-construct within truisms of nature." .... Tim Jag