Description: Although Jim Jarmusch is best known for his storied career in independent cinema, over the years he has produced hundreds of pieces of collage art, the majority of which has been rarely seen by the public. Drawing inspiration from the largest medium of cultural documentation--newspapers--Jarmusch delicately crafts each work by layering newsprints on cardstock. Doppelgänger Andy Warhols are posed in a vast tunnel not unlike the depths of the Large Hadron Collider, Patty Hearst's mugshots drift across Edwardian portraits, and a man's identity is disguised with a coyote's head: maybe he was a celebrity, politician, perp, or all three. In Some Collages, these small-scale (notecard-size) pieces not only pay homage to the documentation medium but are a reminder of how even mundane images can be reconfigured into work that is alternatively funny, scary and strange.
Brief description: Jim Jarmusch is a film director, writer, musician, producer, and artist. A prominent figure in independent cinema, his notable films include Stranger than Paradise (1984), Down By Law (1986), Dead Man (1999), Broken Flowers (2005) and Only Lovers Left Alive (2013). Some Collages is his first book of collage artwork.
Review Quotes: Some Collages rescrambles the kind of information and imagery we have become bombarded with in the nonlinear, digital-first present: a surgeon's head in a Covid mask on a suedehead's body; Oz's brainless scarecrow in a fashion shoot, a Lucha libre fighter lost on a Film Noir set; Salman Rushdie with a nine-iron. In generatively wild times, it's the kind of art you didn't know you needed. For Jarmusch, just like the racket and magnitude of his New York, at least with madness you know where you are. It's sense through a squint. - Dazed, September 2021