NAME: Jonathan Solo
BIRTH PLACE: Western Hemisphere
BIOGRAPHY
From a very early age Jonathan Solo culled imagery from fashion magazines, vintage family photographs, and the female iconography of Catholicism to create meticulously rendered figurative drawings.With the exception of one single unsatisfying semester of college, his highly nuanced skills as a draftsman are entirely self-cultivated.His drawings explore the intersections of male and female identities, queer culture, gender dysphoria, and transgender issues. Solo credits the work of Romare Bearden as the inspiration for his interest in digitally collaging his own photography in Adobe Photoshop—he also sites Diane Arbus’s photography as a key influence. Solo painstakingly hand renders his digitally collaged compositions in graphite pencil, cuts them up, and collages the drawings again to create meta-feminine/masculine figures from a fantastical assemblage of physical characteristics.Recently selected for inclusion in New American Paintings, his work will be presented in Selections from the Diane and Sandy Besser Collection at the de Young Museum, San Francisco later this year. Solo lives and works in San Francisco. This is his first exhibition with Catharine Clark Gallery—he will have a solo exhibition at the gallery in 2008.
