He's not Here: Terry Myers visits
Jim Hodges No Betweens, 1996 silk, cotton, polyester and thread 30x27feet
		Jim Hodges' studio in New York
		The last time I actually visited Jim Hodges in his studio ­ in 1993 ­ he had recently made a piece called What's Left. In it, an identifiably gay "uniform" ­­jeans with a black silver­studded belt, black shirt, black shoes, and white underwear ­­ is deposited on the floor in a compositional arrangement not unlike that casually created by, let's say, an "unexpected" late­night house guest. Completing the piece, a web of inexpensive silver­plated necklace chains had been spun from the ceiling above, landing upon what has become in all senses of the term a still life: "catching" it, holding on. One of the most meaningful aspects of this bargain­basement web is its absolute certainty as a formal device no less effective than Jasper Johns ' or Frank Stella's stripes (although, truth be told, the look and ideology of Daniel Buren's are much more germane here!), a structure which not only frames the visual conditions of the work (the emphatic ­­ not to mention empathic ­­"linearity" of this sexy web outlining a certain directional "thrust" to the piece), but also generates the most productive narrative values to be ascertained from the work: stories connected to the people in the artist's life, in our lives, not to mention some of the details of my own life. In the years since my last studio visit, Hodges's work has been given a much more "public" life of its own in terms of its popularity and success, and it now participates in a fully lived experience which embodies the complicated, tangible absence often contradictorily found in the oppositional, resistant presence of things, of material. If I find myself here overemphasizing the formal integrity of Hodges' art, it is not without good reason. More and more it seems to me that it is precisely in its formal relationships where his work (like many of the most worthwhile artists of our time) fundamentally speaks to the currently exceptional manner in which many of us now "stay" when we leave, a state of existence informed by the way in which almost any move on the part of any subcultural group to the "center" heightens the level at which each marginalized life functions not only in, but more importantly as public discourse during a time period in which too many have gone away too soon. Unfortunately these premature departures too often leave behind a (false?) memory that has been contrived and maintained by the oppressive circumstances of what passes for public discourse in the real world. >

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