‘Jules Buck Jones: Animal Again’
Champion, 800 Brazos, 354-1035
Through March 19
The inside of Champion gallery in the middle of Downtown Austin has been returned to the Forest Primeval. Or close enough, anyway, with Jules Buck Jones’ one-man exhibit there:
“Animal Again.”
In these days when wildlife is so prevalent a trope in pop graphics – Is there no creature on this planet that can’t be depicted with a pair of frickin’ antlers on its head? Is it even possible to think of the moon without imagining three goddamn wolves silhouetted against its fullest phase? – the theme here is no rara avis, but that’s no reason for less appreciation. Jones is mimicking or mocking no one’s style, merely rendering the wilderness, the vanishing wilderness, and its inhabitants with his own natural skills. Sketches, mostly, but large ones and detailed. Sketches, mostly, but built from complexly scrawled layers of black ink and gray, of graphite and grace, upon sprawling sheets of paper. Sketches, mostly, but, really, not so much more sketchy than what you’d perceive while walking through a thick patch of woods while the sun’s doing things with light and shadow that render the visible patterns into a ligneous outtake from a film about chaos theory.
Though color is an infrequent visitor to Jones’ images, an avis isn’t very rara here: The artist has a thing for birds, it seems, and depictions of them – particularly owls – have commanded most of his attention and industry, whether in full-body portraits among those of more streamlined flying raptors or as a grouping of owl-face masks.
In the main installation for this show, one room of Champion is turned, with two-dimensional literalness, into a forest with walls covered by sheets of paper limned with trees and vines and other such woodsy flora; in the midst of this forest, and as witnessed via a large video screen on the back wall, the artist himself is dressed as an owl of his own black-and-white design and flaps his papery wings from a high perch.
Placing not only himself but his creatures into a deeper context, Jones has also rendered small pen-and-inks of the birds’ prey, and dozens of examples, arranged in a precise grid, greet you when entering Champion’s elegant space. Best thing about that is: Jones offers a collection of those images as a small zine, Shit Owls Eat, like some indie band’s CD accompaniment straight outta Kinko’s, for 10 bucks a pop.
So it’s “Animal Again,” yes, and we reckon bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word, and we recommend this show to better feather your aesthetic nest.
This article appears in March 4 • 2011.