Michael Wilson, Artforum.com, September 26, 2002

Jim Shaw
SWISS INSTITUTE
495 Broadway, 3rd floor
September 14 - October 26

If Kenneth Noland had ever met Brigham Young, together they might have arrived at something like Jim Shaw's puritanical doctrine of "O-ism." Centered around an anonymous female deity and a ban on representational painting, this absurdist fictitious religion provides Shaw with a new angle from which to approach the mythology of the Great American Artist. His installation at the Swiss Institute visualizes the dilemma of forgotten O-ist painter Adam O. Goodman, a man of abstraction forced, in violation of his aesthetic and spiritual convictions, to work as an illustrator. "The Goodman Image File and Study" comprises seven mandala-like canvases and a multisided filing cabinet containing an archive of images from popular press. By juxtaposing the metaphysical associations of Color Field painting with "low" commercial naturalism, then filtering the result through a goofy Midwestern construction of modern spirituality, Shaw engineers a bizarre compendium of compromised attempts at purity. A tour of the companion show "O-ist Thrift Store Paintings" at Metro Pictures enhances the likable unhinged effect.