Jim Shaw (artist)

Jim Shaw (born 1952) is a contemporary American artist, born in Midland, Michigan. He received his B.F.A. from University of Michigan in 1974 and his M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts in 1978. Shaw lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and is married to another Los Angeles-based artist, Marnie Weber. Jim Shaw is represented by the Simon Lee Gallery and Blum and Poe.

In 2000, Jim Shaw staged a show at the ICA, 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." For 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." In 1999-2000, Shaw had his first major European retrospective touring at the Casino Luxembourg and at the MAMCO in Geneva.

Jim Shaw is the creator of the O-ism, an American religion said to originate at the same time as Mormonism in the 19th century. 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 2012-13, Jim Shaw exhibited his first UK 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 Art. 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.

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