b. 1946, Galveston, TX, US
Lives and works in Dallas, TX, US
Otis Jones is known for his meditative, post-minimalist, geometric paintings composed on custom-built, stacked plywood forms. These forms might technically be referred to as Jones’ frames, but functionally they are more than mere adornment, as they comprise the base and the sides to his paintings. The stratigraphy of Jones’ works requires viewers to regard his constructions from all sides; some even reveal their interior, accessed through gaps in the plywood stack. Jones stretches and staples linen to the flat planes of the plywood structures, which he then paints with fields of richly-textured, monochromatic color. Within his color fields, he positions smaller geometric forms that mimic the shape of the work at large. These biomorphic, microcosmic shapes made with acrylic paint are opaque and sometimes impastoed. While his paintings are not technically “process paintings”, the visible elements of the construction process— glue, staples, lamination, excess paint—imparts an aura of hand-crafted uniqueness onto each work, fashioned with a sensitivity towards beauty that is derived from rather than at odds with a rugged pragmatism.
Otis Jones (b. 1946, Galveston, TX, US; lives and works in Dallas, TX, US), has held solo exhibitions at MARC STRAUS (New York; 2021, 2019, 2018), Barry Whistler (Dallas; 2020, 2016), Sorry We’re Closed (Brussels; 2019), Sunday-S (Copenhagen; 2019, 2017), Gray Contemporary (Houston; 2017), annex14 (Zürich; 2016), and William Campbell Contemporary Art (Fort Worth; 2012). He was the recipient of a Visual Artists Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1982), and holds a BFA from Kansas State University, and an MFA from the University of Oklahoma. He has taught at Texas Christian University, the University of Texas at Austin, and has served as an Associate Professor and Visiting Professor at University of Texas at Arlington. Jones’ work is in many major private and public collections, including at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), the San Antonio Museum of Art, and the Nelson Atkins museum of Art (Kansas City).
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