Jim Shaw has been proselytizing for his imaginary religion (aren’t they all?), Oism, for more than 20 years, and his pursuit has yielded a sizable, varied and characteristically eccentric body of work. Shaw’s wacko faux faith provides him with a handy context for all kinds of mischief. Here, it serves as the backdrop to a comic-book saga that narrates part two of a forthcoming Oist rock opera. (Be very afraid!)
Also on display are a wall-sized painting, a trio of highly artificial wigs and related drawings, and a roomful of punky outtakes and ephemera from the artist’s contributions to Destroy All Monsters magazine. The last was a short-lived spin-off from the band-collective of the same name that he started in 1970s Ann Arbor, Michigan, with Cary Loren, Mike Kelley and Niagara.
Shaw relates the story in a set of 20 panels illustrated in the style of a ’50s horror comic. These trace the fate of two crooks who break into an Oist museum and, after disguising themselves in outlandish wigs, are whisked back to the religion’s primordial origin. The painting, one of a series made on repurposed theatrical backdrops, riffs on the tale’s hirsute motif in the lurid style of a prog-rock album cover, while the drawings conflate yet more wigs with rolling ocean waves. It’s unabashedly over-the-top stuff, mixing and matching vintage middle-Americana with the artist’s own twisted conception of the transcendental. But while Oism is patently, sometimes maddeningly, absurd, at least the only rights it might threaten are those of hairdressers.
—Michael Wilson