Jim Iserman Untitled (0597)

cm 61 x 61 x 61

Since graduating from the California Institute of the Arts in 1980, Jim Isermann’s work has been characterized by a combination of post-war industrial design culture, low culture, and art: in his installations as in the design of individual objects, he always maintains a high aesthetic and functional quality. His work is inspired by modules and principles from the history of design, reread and interpreted through color and industrial materials, drawing on art history and stretching and playing on the boundaries between the two spheres. In fact, Isermann’s formal range has been influenced and enriched by the Bauhaus, but also Minimalism and Abstract Art, reworked in a playful and “domestic” key through color, and akin to the style of objects and furniture from the 1940s and 50s. "Untitled (0597)" is a foam rubber cube covered with cloth that references the magic cube of Ernő Rubik, and was originally part of a group of four: blue and red, yellow and blue, red, and purple. The work reflects the modus operandi employed by the artist, with its “open” retrieval of a vocabulary of ideas and idioms from art and everyday life, and the use of simple but elegantly functional objects and surfaces, in terms both of materials and forms. This is in keeping with the idea, implicit in Isermann’s work, that pure Modernist design has failed.

No

D. Pagel, M. Darling, J. Isermann, Fifteen: A Fifteen - Year Survey of Jim Isermann’s Work, Milwaukee 1998; DECORUM. Carpets and Tapestries by Artists, exhibition catalogue (Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris), Paris 2014, p. 18; A. Angelidakis, V. Pizzigoni, V. Scelsi (eds.), Super Superstudio, Cinisello Balsamo 2015, pp. 17; 299; 316.

Foto Roberto Galasso

Donation by Claudia Gian Ferrari

Sculpture