By Madison Nagle By Madison Nagle | April 29, 2019 | Culture,
In a field that is seemingly in a constant state of flux, Jonas Wood is here to stay.
As patrons and gallery owners alike witness what we can only call his meteoric rise, Wood heightens his position as a power player impacting the contemporary arts. Flawlessly navigating his way into the spotlight, Wood is shaping the industry’s future zeitgeist.
Thirteen years into his career, Wood showcases his works in two of the biggest shows he’s ever done: an exhibition of new paintings at Gagosian in New York and a survey at the Dallas Museum of Art, his first major solo museum exhibition to date. Very few U.S. and European museums and galleries have an immense impact on which contemporary artists achieve long-lasting, esteemed careers, and with works in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Wood appears to be right on the mark.
Esteemed by the likes of prominent families and institutions including Francois Pinault, Bernard Arnault, Dan Loeb and Paul Marciano, Wood’s market is beginning to escalate across the board.
According to Sotheby’s Mei Moses, the average annual compound return for Jonas Wood is 41.1%, with 100% of his works exponentially increasing in value.
Jeremy Larner, a private art dealer who has bought and sold more Jonas Woods than anyone on the secondary market believes “Jonas is one of the only young LA artists of his generation to reach this caliber of recognition and lasting power and is following suit with west coast masters of the previous generation, such as Ruscha and Baldessari.”
The market for Wood’s works justifies his title as an established heavy weight in the global contemporary scene. Amidst a series of record breaking pieces sold at auction, Larner fetched an outstanding price of $2,023,845 last June for Wood’s “Rosy’s Masks,” a captivating perspective of a boldly detailed interior.
Rosy’s Masks by Jonas Wood, 2008. Details: Oil on linen. Size Height 101 5/8 in.; Width 75 in. / Height 258.1 cm.; Width 190.5 cm. Signed, Inscribed; Sale of Phillips London: Wednesday, June 27, 2018 [Lot 6]; 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale; Estimate £700,000 - 900,000 ‡GBP (905,450 - 1,164,150 USD); Sold For £1,569,000 GBP Premium (2,029,502 USD)
As Wood continues to develop his stylistic technique of creating paintings that appear simultaneously flat and dimensional he approaches a visual language that is characteristically his own. The art industry is a complicated ecosystem, but “his practice has a universally likable language to it that allows its viewers to identify with the timeless images Jonas captures, whether it’s intimate interiors or references to things such as sports or pop culture,” Larner said.
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