NYSS is pleased to present Jim Condron: Collected things. Curated by Karen Wilkin, the exhibition presents twenty-four sculptural works by Jim Condron. The exhibition opened on Thursday, January 30, 2025.

Many of the pieces are constructed from personal items and ephemeral materials collected by Condron that once belonged to artists, writers, and thinkers such as Grace Hartigan, Graham Nickson, Mercedes Matter, Karen Wilkin, Mickey Drexler, Merrill Wagner, and Kevin Aviance. The work explores “thing theory”. The objects’ previous existence and use give them vitality and historical force. Everyday objects become something new as they collide and converse with other things through Condron’s engagement with them. The work expresses humor, absurdity, and beauty through the combination and interaction of quotidian objects, castoff remnants, and paint. Some titles are textual fragments from literature or from a bit of conversation, which adds to the work’s rhetoric rather than naming or defining it.

Condron incorporated the pioneering painter Grace Hartigan’s bright pink Crocs into his poignant sculpture. These were the last shoes Hartigan wore while she was painting. The work also includes a paint stick Hartigan used to mix paint and thinner for one of her final paintings, and her pillow, the pattern of which is reminiscent of Matisse’s cut-outs. Matisse was a lifelong inspiration for Hartigan. Condron based the composition of the sculpture on Philip Guston’s painting Cellar, 1970.

On Tuesday, February 18, Jim Condron and Karen Wilkin will engage in a discussion about the artist’s work as part of NYSS’s Spring 2025 Evening Lecture Series. The event will be held both in person and live-streamed via Zoom.

Originally from Long Island, NY, Jim Condron lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Baltimore, MD. Condron earned his MFA at the Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA in Art and English from Colby College, Waterville, ME. He also studied at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. His work appears nationally and internationally in galleries and museums as well as in corporate, university, public and private collections.