Jimmy Wright
Flowers for Ken: Sunflower Stem
1988 - 1991
Oil on Repurposed Canvas
72 x 72 inches
Jimmy Wright’s
“Flowers for Ken, Sunflower Stem” (1988-91), was painted in response to another pandemic.
While Wright’s long-term partner required intense medical management for an AIDS diagnosis, he turned to painting still-lifes of flowers.
According to Wright,
“They don’t move, I didn’t have to think about subject matter, and I could work on them for 15 minutes or an hour. The studio continuity didn’t have to exist. My concern was how not to drown in all of this.”
In Spring 2021 Jimmy Wright’s art will be included in the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s exhibition Private Eye: The Imagist Impulse in Chicago Art. Wright’s work was included in the 2020 Whitney Museum Of American Art’s exhibition Around Days End: Downtown New York 1970-1986. He has exhibited internationally at Frieze London; Art Cologne; Art Basel Miami; Felix Los Angeles; NADA Miami; Cooper Cole, Toronto; Galerie Patrick Seguin, Paris; Chang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, Taipei, Taiwan; Hang MingShu Museum, Suzhou, P. R. China; Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Tochigi, Japan.
His work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and numerous public and private international collections. He is represented by Fierman Galley, New York and Corbett vs Dempsey, Chicago.
Born in rural Kentucky, Wright moved to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and he lived and made art there for four formative years. Since 1974 the artist has lived and worked in the Bowery, New York City.