NYAB Event - Jim Gaylord "Spoilers"

Jim Gaylord "Spoilers"

Jeff Bailey Gallery

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Jeff Bailey Gallery presents Jim Gaylord: Spoilers, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition in New York and with the gallery.

Gaylord’s work draws upon abstracted imagery found within high-speed action sequences in motion pictures. He creates compositions by collecting film stills of fleeting shapes and special effects, using a computer to superimpose several frames together at once. These studies become the source material for paintings, resulting in something like a painted collage.

The title of the exhibition, Spoilers, refers to the concept of revealing plot elements in a film or story that give away the outcome, in part or in its entirety. Pitting this idea against itself, Gaylord’s work foils the entire narrative format, offering specificity of form, while withholding information that would allow a traditional, linear understanding of the picture.

The source films range from period action dramas, such as “Troy” and “Pirates of the Caribbean," to MTV’s “Jackass," “The Waterboy” and “World Trade Center." The genres of armed conflict and sports suggest a quasi pun for Spoilers, as in the “spoils” of war.

The elongated horizontal format of Gaylord’s paintings evokes the shape of a movie screen. This framework sets the stage for tumultuous action and uncanny conflicts. In “Throne, Overthrown," the largest painting in the exhibition (55 x 96 inches), two minaret-like shapes stand against a neutral sky. Upon this backdrop, military regalia, weaponry and human forms tussle and collide.

While revealing too much can abruptly halt one’s attention to a narrative, Gaylord’s work provokes a continual search for visual clues toward understanding. There is no absolute resolution to the story—it continues to unfold in various directions.

[Image: Jim Gaylord "Bruise Tropic" (2011) oil on canvas 42 x 60 in.]