Jonas Wood

Jonas Wood (born 1977) composes collaged portraits, still lifes, landscapes and interior scenes from bright colors and geometric patterns.  His process involves photographing his subjects from multiple different angles, and then filtering the imagery through sketches and paintings. This offers him the freedom to manipulate and rearrange perspective to create the surprising optical designs of his sought-after paintings. Works like Jungle Kitchen, 2017, and Ovitz’s Library, 2013, encapsulate this by way of their organized pandemonium of color, shapes, angles, and patterns. Wood says, “Of all of the possible things I could paint, the thing that interests me is something that I can get close enough to in order to paint it honestly.” The familiar scenes of everyday objects and life speak to the artist’s personal history, and his unique configurations  invite his audience into his imaginatively interpreted world.

Born in 1977 in Boston, Massachusetts, Wood went on to receive his MFA in painting from the University of Washington in 2002. Today, his works are found in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Saatchi Gallery in London, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. Wood and his wife, ceramicist Shio Kusaka, share a studio and often riff off of each other’s work, each cultivating an individual artistic practice that draws inspiration from the other. They currently live and work in Los Angeles, California.

related works

• Bridget Riley revolutionized Op art with her experimental ethos, activating the audience’s imagination with her illusory effects. View her work.
• In our sister gallery, form & concept, artist Heidi Brandow creates surreal landscapes from a mixed-media patchwork of patterns and shapes. View her work.