JP MUNRO
a selection of recent works
Coming to POST-FAIR Los Angeles
in conjunction with Thomas Solomon Art Advisory
Address:
1248 5th St
Santa Monica, CA 90406
Thursday February 26th - 11am-8pm
Friday February 27th - 11am-6pm
Saturday February 28th - 11am-6pm
JP Munro’s luminous dimensional surfaces evince a deep reverence for the capacity of oil paint to vibrate and capture something of their making in the end result. Munro’s work is also polemical, political, and deeply engaged with painting’s relationship to history and the history of painting. On the one hand engaging earnestly with the legacies of plein aire land-scape painting and on the other provocatively plumbing biblical narratives and iconography with equal parts irony and wonder, the works may at first seem disjointed from another. Taken together they offer painterly meditations on imperial violence.
Munro’s landscapes crawl into the canyons and groves of the San Gabriel mountains. His chosen vantage points eschew the sublime and feel beyond the anthropomorphic. The compositions are a tangle of light and dark, a primordial verdancy with great specificity. The absence of human forms from these works for the artist conveys one of the numerous original American sins: the genocide and removal of native peoples. 19th century American landscape painting, exemplified by artists like Albert Bierstadt, worked to render the newly acquired American west in spiritual and nationalistic terms. Bierstadt’s fantastical mountain scenes conjured up very real speculation about and later exploitation of the west.
Munro’s landscape works are purposefully anti-epic and evoke a different kind of human engagement with the features of landscape. If the sublime offers the western viewer the safe space of contemplation of the landscape in the abstract, Munro offers viewers a chance to feel these natural forms without using them as a means to aggrandize themselves. Astutely avoiding the trite pitfalls of the sentimental landscape painting, these works have more in common with Richard Long’s A Line made by Walking in their ability to capture the experience of deep looking and the joys of duration in nature. Our mountains frequently burn and transform, Munro harnesses the resilience of their towering oaks, tangled undergrowth, and stately granite.
Paintings of Jesus and horrific acts of violence ordained by the Old Testament god? Munro’s narrative works knowingly dig into the ignominy of Christ’s mocking and torture, these lesser forms of imperial violence enacted on his body and person prior to his execution. Probing his own unsuccessful escape from Christianity’s ubiquity, the artist is interested in the duality of pathos and bathos in the passion of Christ. Echoing Manet’s late 19th century rendition of this anticlimactic humiliation, Munro offers a zoned out Jesus ensconced in darkness, hectored by headless bodies, prying hands, and leering mask-like faces.
In a dazzling work that evokes James Ensor and Paolo Uccello, the artist conjures up some old testament horrors and depicts the battle between the Israelites and the Amalekites. Munro’s shimmering rendition is a golden snarl of limbs. The oft cited polemic illustrates that cruel and rotted old testament god who promoted the genocide of Amalakites and also tortured his own followers for kicks and provides the artist a provocative starting point. The work’s disparate figures and action do not resolve, they parade endlessly. Like Uccello’s time-less battle scenes, the narrative offers Munro a set of parameters starting point. The work’s disparate figures and action do not resolve, they parade endlessly. Like Uccello’s timeless battle scenes, the narrative offers Munro a set of parameters for formal and material exploration. There is no rest for the eye in this work, your gaze peruses the endlessness of “god-ordained” acts of violence. JP Munro’s works seem to be quiet, formal affairs at first. They offer much to the lovers of painting with a capital p and more still to those craving discursive wealth.
Anna Kryczka, PhD
Author, Learning by Doing at the Farm: Craft, Science and Counterculture in Modern California
Anna Kryczka’s research focuses on the criticism and display of mid-century American art, design, media, material culture, and architecture.
CONTACT:
Charlie Smith
curator / enthusiast / dealer
CCC GALLERY
charles@cruisecontrolcambria.com
1075 Main Street Cambria CA 93428
JP Munro
Born 1975, Inglewood, CA. Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
Education:
2000 MFA, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA
1998 BFA, University of California, Los Angeles, CA
Research / Teaching Experience:
2024 CalArts, Valencia CA, visiting faculty teaching undergraduate Advanced
Drawing and graduate Independent Studies
Otis College of Design, Los Angeles CA, visiting faculty teaching Painting
Elysian Heights Arts Magnet elementary school, Los Angeles, CA,
Organizing and running Drawing Club for elementary student body
2021 University of California, Los Angeles, visiting artist, lecture and studio visit
with undergraduate art majors
2013 University of California, Los Angeles, substitute teacher for
undergraduate studio art class for the class of Kim Fisher
2000-2001 Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA - research assistant, organized
new acquisitions such as the files of architecture critic Reyner Banham and
the art dealer Galka Scheyer
Solo Exhibitions:
2023 Overworld, Broadway Gallery, New York NY USA
2022 Rainbow Bridge, M+B Gallery, West Hollywood CA USA
2021 JP Munro, South Willard, Los Angeles CA USA
2019 The Fall, The Finley, Los Angeles CA USA
2018 Blasted Rockface, Brennan & Griffin, New York NY USA
2014 The Source, China Art Objects Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA2
2012 JP Munro, China Art Objects Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
2009 JP Munro at Cottage Home, China Art Objects Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
2008 JP Munro, Sadie Coles HQ, London UK
2006 The Marseillaise, China Art Objects Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
2005 The Foundations of the Twenty-first Century, Sadie Coles HQ, London UK
2004 Torture Garden, China Art Objects Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
2002 Ending is Better Than Mending, Sadie Coles HQ, London UK
Blood on the Floor, China Art Objects Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2024 Saints and Poets, Megan Mulrooney Gallery, Los Angeles, CA USA
Losing Sight of Shore, M+B Gallery, West Hollywood, CA USA
2023 South Willard, Gordon Robichaux, New York NY USA
Household Names III, Mandarin on Park, Los Angeles CA USA
Wishing Well, Parker Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
2022 Supermoon, CLEARING, Los Angeles CA USA
One Hundred Eighty Six Billion Steps to the Sun, CLEARING, New York NY USA
Land of the Lotus Eaters, Louise Alexander Gallery, Porto Credo, ITALY
Small Paintings, Venus Over Manhattan, New York NY USA
Bozomag: Bozo Family Hoedown, M+B Gallery, West Hollywood CA USA
2021 Tiger in a Tropical Storm, Louise Alexander Gallery, Porto Cervo ITALY
Rewilding, Nino Mier Gallery, West Hollywood CA USA
The Beatitudes of Malibu, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
Via Cafe, Tif Sigfrids, Athens GA USA
2020 ONLINE: JP Munro and Eric Wesley, Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles CA USA
2019 Group Exhibition, Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago IL USA
2018 Upstairs at Rental, Rental Gallery, East Hampton NY USA3
2017 Fleeting Impressions and Abundance of Detail, Tif Sigfrids, Athens GA USA
Hotel Kalifornia, Galerie Lefebvre & Fils, Paris FRANCE
The History Show, Foxy Production, New York NY USA
2016 Lost with Alice, Patrick Painter Inc, Santa Monica CA USA
Don’t call me when you’re rich and famous, call me only if you are in the gutter,
Grice Bench, Los Angeles CA USA
2015 Sweet Sixteen, China Art Objects Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
2013 Pet Sounds, China Art Objects Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
2012 Nolan Hendrickson, Eddie Martinez, JP Munro, Feuer/Mesler, New York NY USA
Disorder, Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York NY USA
30 Days of Peace Love and Painting, Ellen de Bruin Projects, Amsterdam
NETHERLANDS
2011 Mind Games, China Art Objects Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
2010 The Incomplete-Paris, Galerie Jean-Luc and Takako Richard, Paris FRANCE
2008 JP Munro and Pentti Monkkonen, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York NY USA
Call the Interruptions Day, Leo Koenig Inc, New York NY USA
2007 The Incomplete, Chelsea Art Museum, New York NY USA
2006 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of Art, New York NY USA
Hotel California, Glendale College Art Gallery, Glendale CA
Drawing and Drawn, Cerritos College Art Gallery, Cerritos CA
Alle-Gory, Mandarin Gallery, Los Angles CA
2005 Sunset in Athens, Athens GREECE
Art Athina 2005: California Artists in Greek Collections, Athens GREECE
Wallend Beshty, Erle Maneros, JP Munro, Andy Ouchi, Sean Landers, Michael
Wetzel, China Art Objects Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
2004 She’s Come Undone, Artemis-Greenberg Van Deren Gallery, New York NY USA
Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, UK
100 Artists See God, ICA, London UK
2003 Drawings, Metro Pictures, New York NY USA
Dirty Pictures, The Approach, London UK
Women Beware Women, Deitch Projects, New York NY USA
Drop Out!, China Art Objects, Los Angeles CA USA4
The Great Drawing Show, Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
Works for Giovanni, China Art Objects Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
2001 The Cult, China Art Objects Gallery, Los Angeles CA USA
Morbid Curiosity, ACME, Los Angeles CA USA
Psychobobble, Raucci/Santamaria, Napoli ITALY
2000 New School, Works on Paper, Los Angeles CA USA
The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Laughter, China Art Objects Gallery, Los
Angeles CA USA
Selected Bibliograpy: Monographs/artists' books:
2014 JP Munro, monograph, printed with the support of Bambi Foundation, Berlin,
Germany
Selected Bibliograpy: Books and exhibition catalogs:
2013 Clavis Issue 2, 2013, Clavis Editions, Seattle, Page 5
2009 Judith Rothchild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection: Catalog
Raisonné, 2009, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, Page 202
2006 Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night, 2006, Whitney Museum of American Art
New York, NY, Page 302, Foldout 67
Selected Bibliograpy: Periodicals:
2012 Berardini, Andrew, “JP Munro at International Art Objects and Gustave Moreau
at the Hammer Museum,” LA Weekly, October 11, 2012
Knight, Christopher, “Art Review: Glimpses of the past re-imagined for today,”
Los Angeles Times, October 10, 2012
2009 Lehrer-Graiwer, Sarah, “JP Munro in Chinatown,” ArtSlant, October 20, 2009
2006 Plagens, Peter, “The Art of the Deal” Newsweek, March 6, p.56
Brooks, Amra, “Must See Art,” LA Weekly, November 24, 2005
Kraus, Chris, Jan Tumlir & Jane McFadden, LA Artland (London: Black Dog
Publishing)
Sumpter, Helen, “JP Munro,” Time Out, 9 August
“Picks of the Week: If you’re only going to see one thing this week…” The
Guardian, 25 July
Lack, Jessica, “Preview: JP Munro,” The Guardian Guide, 23-29 July5
Güner, Fisun,”JP Munro,” Metro, 18 July
“JP Munro Foundations of the 21st Century (Picking at the wounds of mythology),”
Flux, issue 49
Núñez-Fernández, Lupe, ‘The month ahead: Top Choice’, Art Review, July
Archer, Michael, “JP Munro,” Art Review, September
2004 Nelson, Arty, “Hunters and Gathers“LA Weekly, May 28
Healy, Murray, “In Deeper Reference Praise,” POP, Autumn / Winter
John Russell, Frozen Tears II (UK: ARTicle Press)
2003 Morton, Tom, “Reviews,” Frieze #74, April
Buck, Louisa, “JP Munro: Ending is Better than Mending,” The Art Newspaper –
What’s On, No. 132, Jan. 2003
2002 Gaines, Malik, “JP Munro at China Art Objects, Los Angeles”, Artext #78, Fall
Tumlir, Jan, Morbid Curiosity, I-20 and Art Center, Pasadena, CA and New York,
NY (catalogue)
Tumlir, Jan, “Morbid Curiosity: The Art School Curiculum and Modernism
Unbound,” Artext, No. 78, Fall
Rimanelli, David, “JP Munro,” Interview, May, p. 46
Smith, Roberta, “The Armory Show, Grown up and in Love With Color”, New York
Times, Friday, February 22
Public Collections:
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA