Samuel Levi Jones: Savage elite

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 20^th 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.

Samuel Levi Jones’ work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Galerie Lelong & Co. Paris, France and New York, NY; Studio Museum Harlem, New York, NY; The Contemporary Dayton, Dayton, OH; Patron Gallery, Chicago, IL; Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA; Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, Indianapolis, IN; and The Arts Club, London, UK. Group shows include San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; PM/AM, London, UK; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI; Sunday-S Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, VA; The Mott-Warsh Collection, Flint, MI; Lehigh University Art Galleries, Bethlehem, PA; Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California, Davis, Davis, CA; Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA; Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, FL; Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA; Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN; Gallery 360, Northeastern University, Boston, MA; Las Cruces Museum of Art, Las Cruces, NM; Museum of Arts and Sciences, Daytona, FL; International Print Center, New York, NY; and Ronchini, London, UK.