"Over the past three decades, Jim Shaw has found inspiration in comic books, pulp novels, rock albums, protest posters, and amateur paintings. His densely layered and humorous works span painting, drawing, sculpture, and homemade zines. He juxtaposes images of friends, family, and his own dreams with world events, pop-cultural phenomena, and alternative realities, blending the personal, the commonplace, and the visionary. Published to coincide with Thinking the Unthinkable in Beverly Hills, Shaws first exhibition with Gagosian, this expansive and vibrantly illustrated catalogue delves into the secret histories of psychedelic therapy, Hollywood legend, and nuclear war- themes that all coalesce in the artists new paintings and sculptures. An essay by Gagosian director Jessica Beck discusses Shaws hallucinogenic depictions of actors Cary Grant, Esther Williams, and Jeff Chandler. A conversation with author Rachel Kushner ranges from the artists formative years through the early weaponization of LSD to the history of 20th Century Fox. In Jim Shaw Kills, a new piece of fiction written in response to the exhibition, novelist Jonathan Lethem dispatches a miniaturized version of Shaw into the comatose body of an ex-president. Jim Shaw (b.

1952) lives and works in Los Angeles. He has recently had solo exhibitions at CAPC musée dart contemporain de Bordeaux, France; Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; New Museum, New York; and Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing. His work is held in the collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; and Centre Pompidou, Paris, amongst others"--.