On April 6th, James Jean will be opening a new show in Tokyo at Kaikai Kiki Gallery. Continuing to work with Takashi Murakami to present his work to Japanese collectors , the American artist has prepared a series of new works collectively entitled Azimuth. One of the highlights will certainly be some new stained glass works (the triptych Portals seen here) that Jean recently revealed last weekend.
The young American artist James Jean paints paintings using aesthetic methods, filled with traditional Chinese scroll painting, Japanese prints and Renaissance portrait painting.
Experimenting with different styles and art-historical genres, the artist depicts detailed cosmological worlds that focus on individual and universal experiences. His small pieces have single figures, busy with everyday tasks, and focus on specific narratives and emotions. Multilevel paintings with images drawn from both modern culture and age-old allegories, the artist imagines a collective sphere of mythological proportions.
James Jean was born in 1979 in Taiwan, and raised in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey. He received his art education at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, which he graduated in 2001.
In the same year 2001 he became an illustrator of one of the largest and most popular comic book publishers DC Comics. In this field, he received seven Eisner Award, three prestigious American Harvey Award, two gold medals and silver from the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles.
James Jean also worked in advertising and participated in many national and international publications. His clients were Time Magazine, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, ESPN, Atlantic Records, Target, Linkin Park, Playboy, Knopf, Prada and other companies. He illustrated the covers for the Fables and The Umbrella Academy comics series, where he won six Eisner Awards in the Best Cover Artist nomination. In 2006, he received a prize in the nomination as the best artist of the World Fantasy Awards.
In 2008, James Jean left the illustration and commercial projects to focus on painting. In 2009, he held his solo exhibition at the Jonathan Levine Gallery. In the summer of 2015, the artist painted large-scale murals for the annual POW! WOW! Hawai`i and Art Event in the Honolulu Museum of Art’s Luce Pavilion.
Currently, James Jean lives and works in Los Angeles.
