Background
Shaw, Jim was born on August 8, 1952 in Midland, Michigan, United States.
Shaw, Jim was born on August 8, 1952 in Midland, Michigan, United States.
He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Michigan in 1974 and his Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in 1978.
Jim Shaw is represented by the Simon Lee Gallery and Blum and Poe. In 2000, Jim Shaw staged a show at the International Cooperation Administration, London, of Thrift Store Paintings—paintings he had collected by (mostly anonymous) amateur artists in America. Some reactions to this show included Adrian Searle of the The Guardian stating "The paintings are awful, indefensible, crapulous…", "these people can"t draw, can"t paint.
These people should never be left alone with a paintbrush", and "The Thrift Store Paintings are fascinating, alarming, troubled and funny.
Scary too, just like America." Foreign Sarah Kent of Time Out: "Critics professing to be gobsmacked by these efforts can never have seen an amateur art show or walked along the railings of the Bayswater road. They should get out more." Its theology centers on a goddess who may not be named and who is referred to only as O. In 2002, Shaw presented an exhibition at the Swiss Institute in New York in which he installed Goodman"s studio and paintings, as well as a massive set of file cabinets housing Gunn"s collection of reference imagery, mostly taken from commercial publications of various kinds.
More O-ist works were exhibited later in 2003-2004 at the Magasin, Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France and Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland. In 2012-2013, Jim Shaw exhibited his first United Kingdom retrospective at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England.
In 2013-2014, Chalet Society, Paris invited Jim Shaw to exhibit his collection of Didactic Artist
Entitled The Hidden World, this exhibition presented a rich universe composed of books, flyers, T-shirts, vinyls, and other illustrations with didactic intentions, that recycled American myths and beliefs and revealed an astounding archive of contemporary imagination. These unclassifiable works were produced by mostly anonymous artists for specific commissions by religious denominations, not so secret societies, far-fetched orders and fraternities, conspiracy theorists of all kinds, children's encyclopedias, and medical books In March 2015, Jim Shaw"s Entertaining Doubts opened at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass Moca).
From October 2015 to January 2016, Jim Shaw: The End is Here, the first New York survey exhibition of his work, exhibited at the New Museum.