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Jonathan Field: Biography and Artist’s Statement Biography Jonathan Field was born in Manchester, England in 1963, and was educated at Lancaster University, receiving his doctorate in 1998. Since 1999 he has exhibited predominantly in the United States. His more recent work was on show at the Korean Cultural Center, Los Angeles, and the Caelum Gallery, New York City in 2000, and was included the following year in Exposed: Contemporary Photography at Fulton Street Gallery, Troy, NY. In 2002 he exhibited in Emerging Artists, BackStreet Galleries, Los Angeles, (2nd Prize Winner), Face Time at the Atlanta Contemporary Museum and Image/AfterImage at Grey McGear Modern. He was selected for the British Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2003 which toured London, Manchester and Glasgow. In 2004 his meditation on the Iraq invasion (maxwell’s demon [new york times] was exhibited in Motion Stills at the Red Gallery, Savannah, and Conflict, held at Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich, England. More recently he has worked closely with literary themes, culminating in a one-person show (W.A.S.T.E.) held at Pinnacle Gallery, Savannah in May 2005. In 2006 his short films Play and How to Explain Art were exhibited at Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, as well as being broadcast as part of Indie Show Case, hosted by Cox Communication, Georgia, USA. He also had work included in the SECAC/MACAA Exhibition at the Parthenon Gallery, Nashville, and Shimmer at Transcultural Exchange in Boston. In 2007 he held a one-person show at Dangenart Gallery, Nashville, and exhibited at Tilt Gallery, Portland and Eyedrum, Atlanta. He is currently represented by Dangenart Gallery, Nashville, and Tilt Gallery, Portland. Since 1999 Field has taught Art History at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Visit www.jonathanfield.org for more information on his academic and practical interests. Statement Jonathan Field is an English installation and new media artist living and working in Savannah Georgia. Unashamedly literary, his art deals with the vagaries of the American Dream, and often references those writers – most notably Thomas Pynchon – who share a similar concern with the state of contemporary America. Two recent series illustrate his interests and concerns. The first (maxwell’s demon) engages directly with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its mediation. On the first day of each month during that year, images taken from the New York Times were enlarged and reproduced in pinheads on sheets of black rubber. These pictures make no attempt to provide direct commentary on the rights and wrongs of the events that transpired during 2003, nor the manner in which they were mediated. Rather, they stand as mute accompaniments to one year in human history, an eerie memorial to a particular sequence of events. maxwell’s demon brings to mind randomness, forming images which evaporate as the viewer moves past, the pinheads flickering. The second (W.A.S.T.E., a multi-media installation) uses video, appropriated sculpture and neon as the media for communicating an urgent yet ambiguous message. Adopting its central motif from Pynchon – the Tristero (a shady, underground group of dissidents) – this installation is informed by Field’s interest in muteness, deferral and resistance. The atmosphere created – particularly at night, when the gallery space is illuminated by a blue neon postal horn - is one of enigma and mystery, of the sinister and the ominous.