Jonas Wood - Editions & Works on Paper New York Tuesday, October 22, 2024 | Phillips
  • “Prints have always been an integral part of my life.” 
    —Joans Wood

    Jonas Wood grew up surrounded by prints: Warhol Cow wallpaper in the hallway, colorful Matisse prints collected by his parents, a Rauschenberg print inherited from his grandfather that still hangs in the artist’s studio today. His early familiarity with the work of modern masters still influences his style today, lending his work a characteristic flatness and an attention to line gleaned from the artist’s intimate study of Calder, Matisse, and Picasso.

     

    Pattern Couch Interior with Mar Vista View, Jonas’s 2020 etching, offers a glimpse into the artist’s Los Angeles home while perfectly capturing Wood’s idiosyncratic use of line. Wood’s visually noisy interior rewards a closer look with newfound fidelity: pillows materialize on the couch; a reflection forms on the glassy coffee table; a seam in the telephone wires reflect the collaged photographs Wood often draws from. The richly detailed curtains, perhaps the most visually arresting element of the print, somehow suggest bright color and pattern using only line, creating a scene brimming with vibrancy despite its monochromatic palette.

     

    Wood’s 2020 painting of the same subject, Patterned Interior with Mar Vista View, is indeed lavishly colored in reds, greens, and blues. In his print, Wood faithfully replicates the scene but replaces the large potted plant on the table with a smaller one, perhaps reflecting a change in his surroundings. From the beginning of his experimentation with the medium, translating his colorful paintings to printmaking has been a learning process for the artist, as described in his 2018 conversation with master printer Jacob Samuel.  “My first question was like, “Well, how are we going to make all these flat areas of color work… how am I going to make all of these flat tonal shapes? And you were like, “Well, we’re going to make those with line.” And I was dumbfounded.”i

     

    Though initially daunted, Jonas Wood has managed to translate the unique qualities of his imagery to a variety of mediums, each of which show new sides of the artist. Pattern Couch Interior perfectly displays Wood’s unique approach to mark-making, his evolved skills as a printmaker, and his appreciation for the quotidian beauty of everyday life.

     

    Jonas Wood, Jonas Wood: Prints, 2018, pg. 11

    • Literature

      Gagosian Gallery, Jonas Wood: Prints 2, New York, 2023, pp. 98-99

370

Pattern Couch Interior with Mar Vista View

2020
Etching, on Hahnemühle paper, with full margins.
I. 23 3/4 x 21 in. (60.3 x 53.3 cm)
S. 29 x 25 1/2 in. (73.7 x 64.8 cm)

Signed with initials, dated and numbered 17/35 in pencil (there were also 20 artist's proofs), published by Pace Editions, Inc., New York, framed.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$4,000 - 6,000 

Sold for $5,080

Editions & Works on Paper

New York Auction 22 - 24 October 2024