For Frieze Los Angeles 2022, Vielmetter Los Angeles presents a selection of new works by Samuel Levi Jones. Jones’ recent and ongoing series of visual abstractions are comprised of pulped and deconstructed law, medical and history books on canvas. Inspired by questions of authority, representation, and recorded history, Jones’ practice centers on physically undoing these volumes of information, only to re-arrange, re-purpose, and re-imagine the materiality into grid-like fields of color and texture. Jones creates painterly compositions on canvas without the use of paint — desecrated book covers sewn together into collage-like patterns, and infused with swathes of pulp, while loose threads and weathered cardboard binding reveal a process of deconstruction. In the making of these works, Jones critically explores systems of truth-making, exposing our precarious relationship to disseminating knowledge and information. Drawing from specific sources, each piece is imbued with not only the history of the book covers and the subject matter of the book material but also the structures of power which produce and perpetuate inequities throughout the world.

Samuel Levi Jones was born (1978) and raised in Marion, Indiana. Trained as a photographer and multidisciplinary artist, he earned a B.A. in Communication Studies from Taylor University and a B.F.A from Herron School of Art and Design in 2009. He received his MFA in Studio Art from Mills College in 2012. He is the recipient of the 2014 Joyce Alexander Wein artist prize awarded to him by the Studio Museum in Harlem. Museum exhibitions include The Empire is Falling at The Contemporary Dayton, Dayton, OH; Left of Center at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, Indiana; Infinite Blue at the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Solidary & Solitary: The Joyner/Guiffrida Collection at the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, Illinois; and Unbound, Studio Museum in Harlem. His work can be found in museum and public collections such as the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Wisconsin; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, FL; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, Florida; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Samuel currently lives and works in Indianapolis, Indiana.