Jimmie DURHAM | 1948

About

Jimmie Durham, born in the USA in 1940 and based in Europe since 1994, is one of few contemporary artists to have hands-on experience of political work. In the 1970s he was an activist in the American Indian Movement and the representative of the International Indian Treaty Council to the United Nations.

Jimmie Durham’s fourth solo show at Christine König Galerie reflects his seriousness and wit, his aesthetic and political engagement, his inventive resistance to architecture. All this is part of his uncompromising commitment to what he calls “humanity’s thinking process.“ Many of his ideas and images recur in different forms at different stages of his career.

Durham, also a poet and a prominent essayist, uses all the components of what is today called visual art. Images and words may be nailed or glued or painted onto objects. His work is “sculpture” in the widest sense: material appearances in space. The materials range from wood and stone and bone to plastic tubes and printed text. Durham also works with drawing, painting, and video. His many-faceted practice is an inspiration for many artists, curators, and theoreticians today, not least of the younger generation. He does not make “art about art” but work that is open to the world outside art.
(quot. Anders Kreuger)