Jim Long

511 west 25th street, new york, ny 10001

www.cueartfoundation.org

2006–2007 j im long

CUE Art Foundation

September 7 – october 14, 2006

CuratedbyRackstrawDownes

j im long

Juggernaut is a group of four paintings i made between 2003 and 2006. They are works in a

series that began in 1988. At the time i was looking for impersonal visual material: spatters, stains,

visual “noise”, complex accidents. i combined incompatible materials like water or crushed ice with

oil paint and ink. in trying to create an accident, most of my effort showed manipulation when

what i wanted was facts. A real accident is hard to come by.

in 1991 i noticed that oil paint left floating in water formed small interesting

structures, like cartoons that existed in dimensions between two and three. i caught some of these

configurations on paper, and later found out what i was seeing was the fractal irregularity of the

“classic mess” i was looking for years before. it was the same phenomenon the botanist Robert

Brown had seen in 1827: the physical trace of invisible molecular activity that kept pollen grains

floating in water in perpetual movement.

This is common visual imagery. it’s a material/perceptual layer with elastic

dimensions. Scaling replaces perspective and illusion, figure and ground shift constantly. Delacroix

wrote in 1864 about drawing small rocks and seeing that their irregular forms were identical to

those of nearby cliffs.

A few years ago i was in an empty room and for a moment imagined four large

discs covered with linear movement. i recognized the images: thirteen inch mylar circles i had

put aside ten years earlier. When i thought about the amount of work it would take to translate

them into large paintings “juggernaut” came to mind, though i wasn’t quite sure what it meant.

While i was working on the first paintings i looked it up and found the word comes from the

Sanscrit name for jagannatha, a title for Krishna and Vishnu meaning “protector of all that moves”,

including things invisibly small.

Artist’s Statement JimLongForward CUEArtFoundation

We are honored to host this exhibition of the work of jim long, generously curated by fellow

artist Rackstraw Downes. long, originally from Springfield, mA, has long been admired by his

peers as an artist who has forged a unique artistic voice over the years mr. Downes’ appreciation

of mr. long’s paintings demonstrates how the Foundation’s discretionary selection process allows

the unfettered expression of each curator’s views.

The works in this exhibition a part of a series mr. long began fourteen years ago.

We appreciate that artists often work tirelessly without thought or concern of exhibition opportu-

nities. CUE is pleased to recognize such commitment by affording just such an opportunity, thus

celebrating the efforts of artists such as mr. long.

The four consummate and monumental works that make up jim long’s show are collectively titled

For Jagannatha, after the Hindu god. in these works, the normally conspicuous stamp of human

decision making appears to be absent, and art making resembles a protracted natural process, like

the formation of stalagtites on the ceiling of a cave.

in For Jagannatha, long’s process creates colonies of matter made up of tiny

warm dark branchings, lying on a blonde surface of natural cotton duck and dispersing towards a

proto-circular periphery. in their slight but bewilderingly endless internal variations these colonies

image a society held together not by laws, hierarchies or leaders but by an indivisibly affiliated

consistency of substance. long maps them on the most singular of geometrical areas—only one

directional decision determines the periphery of a tondo—and the one to which they most nearly,

and almost, correspond. But they behave organically; like garden vegetables in rows, or versals on

backgrounds in illuminated manuscripts, they spill over the tondo’s confines and offset its inflex-

ibility. At their boundaries, where the dispersing energy appears to conclude, they mass more

densely in an act—so it seems—not of territoriality but of self-defining completion: to the viewer

they say with satisfaction: “now i am whole”.

Curator’s Statement RackstrawDownes

Florence 1988 Oil,inkandgraphiteonpaper 14"x11"

untitled 1994 Oilonmylaronaluminum 4discs,12"diametereach

TheDrunkenBoat 1994-95 Oiloncanvas 109"x210"

top: OutofKishkindhya 1996(Hanuman#1) Oilandwaxoncanvas 40"x60"

SaturnDevouring 1996OneofHis OiloncanvasChildren 28"x28"

bottom: Hanuman(Night) 2000 Oilandenameloncanvas 48"x68"

top: ForJagannatha 1993-2003WorkingDrawing3Oilonmylar 13"diameter

top: ForJagannatha 1993-2003WorkingDrawing1 Oilonmylar 13"diameter

bottom: ForJagannatha 1993-2004WorkingDrawing2Oilonmylar 13"diameter

bottom: ForJagannatha 1993-2005WorkingDrawing4Oilonmylar 13"diameter

ForJagannatha2 2003-2004 Oiloncanvas 126"diameter

ForJagannatha1 2003 Oiloncanvas 126"diameter

jim long was born in Springfield, massachusetts in 1949, received a B.A. in Art History from

Swarthmore College, and attended San Francisco Art institute. He moved to new York City in

1976, and began exhibiting work in galleries and museums here and in Europe in 1981. He worked

in set design and technical production for dance and theatre, and has taught for many years in

the summer program of the marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation. He is a contributing writer

at the Brooklyn Rail.

RackstrawDownes

Rackstraw Downes was born in England in 1939. He took his B.A. in English literature at

Cambridge University, England in 1961 and his m.F.A. in Painting at Yale in 1964. He has since

divided his time between new York, maine and Texas. He has had solo shows in new York at the

Kornblee; Hirschl & Adler modern; marlborough; Robert miller; and Betty Cunningham galleries;

and at Texas gallery, Houston. His work is represented in the collections of the Art institute

of Chicago; the Carnegie institute; the Hirshhorn museum; the museum of Fine Arts, Houston;

the ludwig museum; the museum of modern Art; the nelson-Atkins museum and the Whitney

museum of American Art. in 1979, Downes edited Art in Its Own Terms, Selected Criticism 1935-

1975 by Fairfield Porter. in 2000, Downes published In Relation to the Whole: Three Essays from

Three Decades – 1973, 1981, 1996 (Edgewise Press) and Under the Gowanus and Razor-Wire

Journal: The Making of Two Paintings (Turning the Head Press). in 2005 Princeton University Press

published Rackstraw Downes by Sanford Schwartz, Robert Storr and Racsktraw Downes. Downes

received a guggenheim Fellowship in 1998 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts

and letters in 1999.

Biographies JimLong

Cover: Studio view of, at left: ForJagannatha1, 2003, oil on canvas, 126"

diameter; at right: ForJagannatha3, 2004, oil on canvas, 126" diameter

Photo credits: Regina Cherry: pg #11; jim long: cover, pg #10; Kevin noble: pg

# 5, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17; Ken Showell: pg # 6-7, 8-9

iSBn: 0-9776417-5-9

All artwork © jim long

Catalog designed by Elizabeth Ellis

mission Statement CUEArtFoundation

CUE Art Foundation, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit arts organization, is dedicated

to providing a comprehensive creative forum for contemporary art by

supporting under-recognized artists via a multi-faceted mission spanning

the realms of gallery exhibitions, professional development programs and

arts-in-education.

CUE Art Foundation was established in june of 2002 with

the aim of providing educational programs for young artists and aspiring art

professionals in new York and from around the country. These programs draw

on the unique community of artists, critics, and educators brought together

by the foundation’s season of exhibitions, public lectures, workshops, and its

studio residency program: all are designed to be of lasting practical benefit to

aspiring and under-recognized artists. The entire CUE identity is characterized

by artistic quality, independent judgment and the discovery of genuine talent,

and provides long-term benefits both for creative individuals associated with

CUE and the larger art marketplace. located in new York’s Chelsea gallery

district, CUE’s 4,500 square feet of gallery, studio and office space serves as

the nexus for educational programs and exhibitions conducted by CUE.

BOARDOFDiRECTORS

gregory Amenoff

Theodore S. Berger

Patricia Caesar

Thomas g. Devine

Thomas K. Y. Hsu

Brian D. Starer

ADviSORyCOUNCiL

gregory Amenoff

William Corbett

meg Cranston

Vernon Fisher

malik gaines

Deborah Kass

irving Sandler

ExECUTivEDiRECTOR

jeremy Adams

DiRECTOROF

DEvELOpmENT

Elaine Bowen

pROgRAmS

COORDiNATOR

Beatrice Wolert-Weese

pROgRAmSASSiSTANT

Kara Smith

Jim Long

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