Jimmie Durham

Jimmie Durham’s new work, an archive constructed out of found materials, offers refreshingly simple meditations on the extensive contents of his studio. Constituting something of a tribute to Berlin, “Elements and Material from my Atelier in Berlin’s Grunewald Forest”—a literal description of the show’s assemblages of objects—seems to offer a farewell to the city where the artist has lived for the past eight years. Significantly, Durham’s atelier was built by Hitler for Arno Breker in 1940, adding a dark subtext to the show’s occasionally playful overtones. By rearranging objects found in and around the Grunewald Forest—everything from rusted tools to giant mushrooms, old stamps to half-disintegrated gloves, are mounted on painted wood and accompanied by text—Durham questions the relationship between social and artistic processes, responding to the political and physical history of his environment. Following an urgent impulse to reclaim his found objects, Durham uses his paintings to construct radical investigations into nature and culture.