Jim Isermann

Jim Isermann was born in 1955 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He received a BFA at the University of Wisconsin in 1977 and his MFA at California Institute of the Arts in 1980. In the 1980s, Isermann created entire environments with rooms filled with furniture and decorative objects, all handcrafted. The contrast of moving from Wisconsin to California, and the experience of the modern architecture of the suburban, southern Californian landscape, influenced the environments he created. Isermann blends work done in the traditional sphere with the Bauhaus artists, influences from op art, and artists like Frank Stella and Larry Bell. In a succinct description of Isermann’s work, writer Dave Hickey states, “He may traffic in supergraphics and hot pink motel furniture, but Jim Isermann is, first and foremost, a California artist with Bauhaus tendencies, Minimalist agendas, and formalist precedents in the Abstract Classicism of John McLaughlin and Frederick Hammersley.”