Bruce Conner + Jess: The Virtue of Uncertainty
Reception: Saturday September 9, 3-5pm, with a curatorial tour at 3pm
Two of the most original and broad-ranging 20th century American artists — Bruce Conner (1933-2008) and Jess (1923-2004) — are brought together in a presentation of more than 60 artworks to call attention to common, repeating motifs and intentions in the work of these puzzle-making geniuses.
Though two extremely different personalities, both artists were iconoclasts who relocated to the Bay Area (Jess in 1948; Conner in 1957) to escape their stifling, middle-class upbringing. They came for creative, intellectual, and social freedom, and became members of tight-knit communities of artists, poets, and musicians with low expectations about the commercial viability of their art and a consequent inclination toward radical experimentation.
Central to both Conner and Jess — for conceptual -- as well as financial -- reasons — was the practice of scavenging for the raw materials of art making. By re-claiming objects, images, language, even thrift shop paintings, then re-assessing, re-arranging, re-painting and re-contextualizing them, they alchemically transformed the everyday into talismanic artworks, loaded with potential meaning. Stylistically, these works often had a sense of fracture and repair… of a shattered world order, re-assembled to reveal long-hidden truths.
Because they’re pieced together from recognizable images or objects, viewers are induced to engage, thinking they’ll be able to decode these fetishistic artworks, and hoping to discover the artists’ answers to existential mysteries. But Jess and Conner were both riddle masters, whose intent was to confound. They exploited the space between familiarity and uncertainty, requiring their audience to untangle their symbols, connotations, and dark humor, knowing that in the process of deciphering, you, the viewer, unwittingly become a collaborator in the making of meaning.
Gathered from private collections and the estates of the artists, many of the paintings, drawings, collages and sculptures in this show have never been publicly exhibited.
Born in 1933 in McPherson, Kansas, Bruce Conner experimented in painting, filmmaking, assemblage, collage, drawing, photography, printmaking, performance and conceptual projects over the course of a six-decade career. His work has been exhibited in and collected by major museums throughout the world, most recently and completely in the retrospective exhibition and major catalogue of his work, It’s All True, which was presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.
Jess (Burgess Collins) was born in Long Beach, California in 1923. He abandoned a career in science (he worked on the Manhattan Project, producing plutonium for nuclear bombs) to move to San Francisco and study at the California School of Fine Arts (later renamed San Francisco Art Institute) in 1948. The next year, he met the poet Robert Duncan, with whom he had a romantic and sometimes collaborative relationship until Duncan’s death in 1988. Jess’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Art Institute of Chicago and The Whitney Museum of American Art. His work is included in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, as well as many others.
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Jess (Collins)Self-Portrait, early 1950shandmade oil and wax crayon on paper in artist's frameimage 12 x 9 in / 30.5 x 22.9 cm
frame 20 x 16 1/2 in / 50.8 x 41.9 cm -
Bruce ConnerSELF-PORTRAIT, 1991graphite on paper14 7/8 x 14 7/8 in
37.8 x 37.8 cm -
Jess (Collins)Assembly Lamp Seven, 1963mixed media assemblage29 x 18 x 18 in
73.7 x 45.7 x 45.7 cm -
Bruce ConnerSICK LADY, 1958photographs, fabric, brocade, nylon, metal flower on board6 1/2 x 6 1/2 in
16.5 x 16.5 cm -
Bruce ConnerUNTITLED FEBRUARY 28, 1967, 1967ink on paper13 1/4 x 11 in
33.7 x 27.9 cm -
Jess (Collins)Untitled (Handbill), 1951pasteup and ink on paper in artist's frameimage 7 3/4 x 5 in / 19.7 x 12.7 cm
frame 10 x 7 1/4 in / 25.4 x 18.4 cm -
Jess (Collins)If Word Wallower Best, n.d.word collage in red and black ink (double-sided)11 1/4 x 17 in
28.6 x 43.2 cm -
Jess (Collins)Surrealist Shells, 1966ink on paper27 x 10 3/4 in
68.6 x 27.3 cm -
Bruce ConnerUNTITLED D-10, 1966ink and pencil on paper39 1/2 x 25 5/8 in
100.3 x 65.1 cm -
Bruce ConnerUNTITLED NOVEMBER 5, 1963, 1963ink on paper26 1/4 x 20 in
66.5 x 50.8 cm -
Bruce ConnerUNTITLED 3/7/55, 1955oil on masonite in artist's frame
12 x 9 in
30.5 x 22.9 cm -
Jess (Collins)Sea Cove, 1952oil on canvas in artist's velvet wrapped frameframe 19 1/2 x 25 1/2 in / 49.5 x 64.8 cm
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Jess (Collins)Emblems for Robert Duncan II: #6, "To open Night's eye that sleeps in what we know by Day", 1989pasteup6 x 5 3/4 in
15.2 x 14.6 cm -
Bruce ConnerUNTITLED, c. 2000engraving collage6 1/2 x 4 1/2 in
16.5 x 11.4 cm -
Bruce ConnerBIRTH OF VENUS, 1959paper, gold foil, metal tacks, shell, beads, fabric, thread, hair, twine, cherry pit, cigarette butt, glass, metal, plastic, fabric and nylon stocking on Masonite12 x 9 1/2 in
30.5 x 24.1 cm -
Bruce ConnerDECK: TEXT CARD, WINE / SNOW, 1975ink and press-on-type on paper6 x 4 in
15.2 x 10.2 cm -
Bruce ConnerLANDSCAPE SEPTEMBER 21, 1998, 1998engraving collage6 1/2 x 6 1/2 in
16.5 x 16.5 cm -
Bruce ConnerPRIMAVERA, 1959mixed media assemblage9 1/4 x 16 in
23.5 x 40.6 cm -
Bruce ConnerTEMPLES, 1963ink on paper14 x 10 7/8 in
35.6 x 27.6 cm -
Bruce ConnerUNTITLED (LOVE YES YES) MARCH 11, 1962, 1962ink on paper12 x 9 in
30.5 x 22.9 cm -
Bruce ConnerUNTITLED AUGUST 7, 1975, 1975ink on paper22 1/8 x 29 7/8 in
56.2 x 75.9 cm -
Jess (Collins)Cover for Credences 3, 1975pasteup8 1/2 x 14 in
21.6 x 35.6 cm -
Jess (Collins)Meadow Sweet, n.d.handmade oil and wax crayon on paperboard in artist's frame6 1/2 x 4 1/4 in
16.5 x 10.8 cm -
Jess (Collins)Song of the Borderguard, c. 1955ink on paper13 x 10 1/2 in
33 x 26.7 cm -
Jess (Collins)The Opening of the Field, 1960ink and pasteup16 x 10 1/2 in
40.6 x 26.7 cm -
Jess (Collins)Untitled (Four Women on Park Bench), illustration for Caesar's Gate, 1955pasteup8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in
21.6 x 16.5 cm