Jim Shaw: The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of

"A monochromatic Ionic column emerging from the head of a bearded, twinkly-eyed pagan entity; a bas-relief depicting a giant juvenile delinquent coiffure morphing into a werewolf;  a classroom physiology chart showing a human gastrointestinal tract augmented by six golden trumpets; a poster for a children’s movie about anthropomorphic cake slices visiting Paris; a collage depicting Peter Lorre’s old green head as the moon over a tangled greyscale landscape of hot nudes. How could all this material be dumped by one powered-down cortex?

I’ve heard it suggested on more than one occasion that Jim Shaw’s Dream Drawings and Dream Objects must be some sort of fabrications -- that nobody has dreams that intricate and reference-laden, let alone remember it all. While it would be correct to assume that I  -- as the critic who has probably spilled the most ink regarding Jim’s work   over the years -- share some deep affinities with his idiosyncratic modus operandi, I can’t prove that Jim’s sleeping visions are the real source of the drily repertorial graphic narrative drawings and flamboyantly variegated multi-media objects that bear that designation. 

What I can attest to is that some people do dream and remember in the abundance of richly aesthetic, convolutedly narrative, and absurdly humorous detail that Jim’s Dream work conveys -- because I myself have been blessed and afflicted with the same superfluity of nocturnal emissions -- although I have an excuse: I was a grand mal epileptic between the ages of 13 and 23, so my wiring is configured according to some souped-up electroconvulsive template. 

My last seizure was in my first year at art school, in the library, looking at a thumbnail magazine reproduction of one of Richard Prince’s appropriated cigarette cowboys, thinking I wanted to rephotograph the tiny B&W image, blow it up and present it as my own work. A trapdoor of infinite regression opened in my brain, and I fell through -- past uncountable reappropriations of Marlboro men, into darkness. It would make an excellent Jim Shaw piece!

I’m not suggesting that you have to have electrical storms in your brain to appreciate Jim Shaw’s work (but it helps yuk! yuk! yuk!) In fact, my understanding of this sort of electrochemical difference is that it’s just a slight shift to the side of most peoples’ normal waking consciousness -- which accounts for the tremendous broad spectrum popularity of Shaw’s work across popular culture, the artist’s peers, academia, and the marketplace. Because at some fundamental level, we all recognize that, as Aldous Huxley suggested in “The Doors of Perception,” our minds function as filters, stepping down the torrent of sensory stimuli and ideations to a manageable trickle. Art is the place where it’s safe to open the spigot..."

Read the rest of "The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of" in the catalog for "Rather Fear God"
current exhibition at Praz-Delavallade & Vedovi in Brussels, Belgium

Image: Jim Shaw, Dream Object ("In a thrift store, I saw a Salvador Dali cartoon book... Then I found a book like box of 40's Dali ties and scarves on cardboard leaves like a distributor's sample box plus a collage with a ground of 40's nude photos & Peter Lorre as...), 2015, paper collage on board, 15 x 20 inches