Opening Reception: Saturday, April 27, 3:00–5:00 pm
 

Altman Siegel is pleased to present a solo exhibition with Samuel Levi Jones. Drawing from the artist’s dedicated interrogation of the systems of power dictating the exchange and accessibility of information, this grouping encourages viewers to question who is excluded from the traditional canons of literature and art history. This solo exhibition marks Jones’ first in San Francisco.

For over a decade, Jones has been seeking out and destroying historical and contemporary source materials as a means of examining the systems of oppression embedded within their covers. This inquiry through materiality began in the Bay Area when Jones was a student at Mills College. Seemingly calm on the surface, the artist’s minimalist abstractions teem with unease, inviting viewers to question traditional modes of thinking about history, culture, and fine art. This exhibition showcases the artist’s work with two disparate source materials: Harvard Classics and Galerie Lelong & Co.’s archive of print portfolios.

Published at the beginning of the 20th century, the Harvard Classics promised buyers the benefits of a liberal arts education from the comfort of their own home. A set of fifty books, plus a reading guide and associated volume of lectures, the Classics were considered a definitive overview of world literature. Yet, they excluded the voices of women and people of color. Using this history as a starting point, Jones separates the covers of these books from their content, stripping them and sewing them together on canvas. In doing so, Jones reframes the compilation, arguing that it is not comprehensive but rather a meaningless apparatus of oppression.

Working with Galerie Lelong and Co.’s archive in 2019, Jones directed his critical eye towards art history. Using editions of print portfolios created by the gallery’s represented artists, Jones refashioned these works on paper into assemblages, critiquing the predominance of white men in the field of fine art. This subversive use of the archive to highlight its own flawed hierarchies is crucial to Jones’ practice.

Altman Siegel