Samuel Levi Jones To Be Represented By Galerie Lelong

Galerie Lelong is proud to announce the representation of Chicago-based artist Samuel LeVi Jones. Inspired by questions of authority, representation and recorded history, Jones has built a personal and poetic body of work centered around the deconstruction of institutional texts. Galerie Lelong will open its first solo exhibition with the artist on December 8, 2016.

Peeling the covers from encyclopedias and law books, Jones rearranges their interiors into grid-like compositions that expose the flaws within written history. As he explains, "I am ultimately thinking about information that is selectively left out." His studies of exclusion and identity examine larger issues of social and racial inequality that are at the forefront of debates in America. The skin-like tactility of the fabric and leather book covers highlights the uneasy relationship between the human body and text, systems of power and material. Within the literal, physical act of pulling and destroying the pages, which he often reduces to pulp as material for sculpture, Jones challenges codified systems of education and law. The interiors of the covers are washed clean of text or image, yet retain traces of embossing and soft leather typically associated with authoritative publications. The pieces are then rearranged and stitched into orderly configurations, shifting the power to the artist and amplifying his confrontation with the sanction of recorded history.

The new body of work that will debut in his upcoming exhibition at Galerie Lelong was created this past summer at a private residency program in Northern California, in which Jones obtained discarded books from the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. The gallery will also present Talk to Me (2015), a large-scale, multi-panel work comprised of deconstructed law books that interrogates the limitations of the justice system. The work was created for the 2x2 Solos program at Pro Arts, Oakland, CA and originally showed at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Samuel LeVi Jones was born in Marion, IN, and lives and works in Chicago, IL. Trained as a photographer and multidisciplinary artist, Jones earned a Bachelor of Arts from Taylor University, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Herron School of Art and Design, and a Master of Fine Arts from Mills College. His recent museum exhibitions include After FrEd Wilson at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art and Unbound at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. His work is included in museum and public collections such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. In 2014, Jones was the recipient of the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, an annual award whose past recipients include prominent artists such as Leslie Hewitt, Glenn Ligon, and Lorna Simpson.

For more information on Samuel LeVi Jones, click here.