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In Tim Jag’s Colorband series, a carefully
orchestrated system of colors corresponds
to the various characteristics of place: coastal versus island; north
versus south; east versus west; rainy versus sunny. In this series
Jag’s destination of choice is Spain. Each composition summons the impression of a
particular Spanish town or city yet to be visited in this make-believe
itinerary. Each consist of a unique medley of colors, thickly applied
and richly textured to give the essence of place more weight and
tactility—as if to suggest we were there this very moment,
experiencing it not in a painting but in person. The pungent green of the olive trees of the
south, the punchy blue of Mediterranean light, event the velvety brown
of a chocolate torte savored at a bustling city café: the colors carry
associations that engage the senses and trigger memories individual to
each viewer. The flavors, sights, sounds, and scents of Spain all
inhibit these canvases and works on paper. Tim Jag’s work has been described as the
marriage Pop imagery and color with hard-edge painting. What is missing
from this description, however, is his expressionistic handling of the
paint. His works do not have the dispassionate logic and unmodulated
finish of an Ad Reinhardt or Ellsworth Kelly painting. They are about
the application of paint on the opposite end of the spectrum: generously
layered, heartily textured, brightly colored, zealously aware of its own
making. Regardless of the
subject matter—whether the flower, circus or other popular culture
references of earlier series or the pure abstraction of the Colorband
works—Jag’s entire body of work embraces this rigorous painting
style. Abstraction, of course, leaves much to the
imagination and invites one to travel his or her own sentimental journey
to the past or into the future. Likewise the insistent brushstroke (or
palette knife) invites one to become immersed in the physical properties
of paint. In this latest series of paintings, Tim Jag invites us to be
his copilot along a voyage that will bring us to the essence of both
place and paint. For me, the act of painting
is a process of how the grid (industrial culture) defines itself from
the natural world: an inclusive act that brings in cultural media and
ephemera from that culture. Having an affinity for industrial design and
pop culture, I find visual resources as random as the hardware store,
the toy store, the produce department at a supermarket, dated textiles
and papers, beat-up billboards, highway signs and symbols or the design
of a magazine ad. With this in mind, I want my paintings to reflect the
way culture organizes and builds upon itself, specially the way
architecture and industrial design separate us from the organic world.
As such, symmetrical organizing has become a central issue in the
painting process. -Tim Jag
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