Alex Colard

ABOUT the artist
Jim Dine (born 16 June 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is a contemporary artist whose œuvre extends over sixty years. Dine’s exceptionally diverse practice includes painting, drawing, printmaking (in many forms including lithographs, etchings, gravure, intaglio, woodcuts, letterpress and linocuts), sculpture and photography; his early works encompassed assemblage and happenings, while in recent years his poetry output, both in publications and readings, has increased.
Dine has been associated with numerous art movements throughout his career including Neo-Dada (use of collage and found objects), Abstract Expressionism (the gestural nature of his painting), and Pop Art (affixing everyday objects including tools, rope, articles of clothing and even a bathroom sink) to his canvases, yet he has actively avoided such classifications. At the core of his art, regardless of the medium of the specific work, lies an intense process of autobiographical reflection, a relentless exploration and criticism of the self through a number of highly personal motifs which include: the heart, the bathrobe, tools, antique sculpture, and the character of Pinocchio (among flora, skulls, birds and figurative self-portraits). Dine’s approach is all-encompassing, incorporating his entire lived experience: “Dine’s art has a stream of consciousness quality to its evolution, and is based on all aspects of his life—what he is reading, objects he comes upon in souvenir shops around the world, a serious study of art from every time and place that he understands as being useful to his own practice.”
Dine’s art has been the subject of more than 300 solo exhibitions, including retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1970), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1978), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1984–85), Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan (2011) and Museum Folkwang, Essen (2015–16). His work is held in permanent collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Gallery, London; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.
Dine’s distinctions include his nomination as a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York (1980), Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2003), the British Museum Medal (2015) following his donation of 234 prints to the museum in 2014, membership of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome (2017), and Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur (2018).

ABOUT the exhibition
Wetterling Gallery is proud to announce a new exhibition in our project room with the American artist Jim Dine. It is Dine’s 11th solo exhibition with gallery, open from April 16 – May 22, with an opening reception April 15, 3 – 7 pm.

Throughout Jim Dine’s career, spanning over six decades, painting, drawing, sculptures, photography and even poetry recitals are included in his artistic œuvre. However, printmaking stands out and plays a vital and important role. Just since 2001, Dine has produced over 750 prints using various techniques such as lithography, woodcuts, etching, drypoint, monotype as well as aquatint.
Just before the lockdown began in spring 2020, due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Dine immersed himself in the print studio, making a new series of works. Together with printers Gabi Pechmann and Christoph Chavanne, Dine created a monumental series of new woodcuts in their studio in Austria. As before, he used unconventional tools, for example a chainsaw, so create the complex surfaces in the blocks used when printing. He also worked with the editions in several stages; reusing old blocks, painting over the print, and adding paint afterwards.
“I don’t like to waste anything. I’ve never thrown a drawing or a painting away – I’ve always reused, recycled it somehow. I don’t usually print out the edition and then carve again into the block. I like to keep the blocks and then reuse them, and then change the image by putting another kind of block on top and then printing it out and then reprinting on top of that. That’s the pleasure of printing, not absurdly – it’s printing.”

• Jim Dine, interview with Cristea Roberts Galley, 2019
  As for the motives of the new series of works, Dine returned to his iconic images of the heart, the bathrobe and the torso. Each work is a renewed investigation into the possibilities of printmaking. How large can a print be? How many colors can be used for one single edition? Dine has never compromised or been afraid to push the boundaries and continues to do so in this new suite of woodcuts. The works will also be included in the forthcoming new volume of Dine’s print catalogue raisonné, compiled by Tobias Burg, published by Steidl.
  Born in 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Dine studied at the University of Cincinnati, Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, Massachusetts and Ohio University, Athens, USA. Since his first solo exhibition in New York in 1960, Dine has had over 300 solo exhibitions worldwide, most recently at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2018). His work has been recognised with retrospectives including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1970), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1978), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1999), and National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (2004). Dine lives and works in Paris, France, and in Walla Walla, Washington.

ABOUT the gallery
Wetterling Gallery is one of the leading galleries for contemporary art in Scandinavia, with a dynamic program of both highly internationally acclaimed artists, and young upcoming artists from Sweden. With a unique and playful entrance to the art world, Wetterling Gallery stands for quality and relevance in the present. We make art available for a curious audience.
Founded in 1978, we consider ourselves a long-term partner for our artists, collectors, institutions and the general public that plays a significant role for the development of the both the local and the international art scene. With a history of bringing international artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist and Frank Stella to Sweden we are today also presenting Swedish artists to the international art scene. Our vision is to provide a platform for dialogue and meetings between different forms of artistic expression, and between people.
The gallery arranges six exhibitions annually in the main space in Stockholm, and around the same number in the project space that was inaugurated in 2015, allowing the gallery program to be more dynamic. Wetterling Gallery also have a showroom in Gothenburg, where a curated selection of our collections is shown on regular basis.
Please note that out exhibition programme is researched and developed well in advance and we are unable to accept unsolicited approches for meetings, exhibitions or projects. https://www.wetterlinggallery.com/