jim avignon

neoangin
a friendly dog in an unfriendly world
CD + booklet / 33 tracks
size : 11 x 12,5 cm
artwork : jim avignon
wonder records / 2001

Jim Avignon (born 24 December. 1966 in Munich) is a contemporary German pop artist designer and musician. A respected cult figure in the art and techno subculture in Berlin, where he currently lives and works. Jim Avignon was born Christian Reisz. He started painting when he was 21 years old, exhibiting in techno clubs. His ideas on art were very clear: "I'd rather sell a thousand images for one dollar, than one image for a thousand dollars." He demonstrated his commitment to this philosophy when he exhibited his work in Frankfurt in 1995: the public was allowed to take any of the 800 originals on display home for free. This exhibition was aptly named "Get Rich With Art".

At a 1992 exhibition in Kassel, he created one painting each day only to destroy it in the evening. A documentary was made about the exhibition, called "Destroy Art Galleries". Issues from politics and society, art and pop culture are mixed with images from the world of fairy tales and fables in narrative structures. His paintings become the stage for very different protagonists of figuration, cartoons, anime and fantasy world. Pets embody human condition, beyond the cheerful mood lurks the unknown.

Jim Avignon loves the people and their weaknesses. He seeks the sublime in the banal and finds the sublime in the banal. Many of Jim's work keeps touch with the reality of a kind of radical philosophical calm balanced with the seriousness and serenity. Through the clever, poetic subtitles Typo in distinctive features Avignon, not only as an intelligent, politically-informed and subversive artists, but also as a logical concept artist. 

Since 1997, Avignon, occurs as a musician under the name of "NEOANGIN" and is still published over 10 CDs with electronic music. His songs are the actual musical extension of his graphic world. They are tiny pop miniatures that rarely excede 2'30”. Played with disarming enthusiasm on a rudimentary Yamaha synthesizer, they are particularly efficient on stage where Jim Avignon plays them while frenetically jumping in front of his giant paintings as if he was a character just escaped from a Gameboy ! 

As a graphic designer Jim has already worked with Swatch, Arte, NewYorker and even painted a plane for British Airways ! Hyperactive, he has also produced a series of cartoons for the TV channel ARD, the Attack Delay magazine and has involved the Berlin graphic scene into dozens of exhibitions and performances across the world (ICA in London, Sonar Festival in Barcelona, Jyväskyla Museum of Contemporary Art in Finland, Goethe Institute of Singapour, Iguapop Gallery in Barcelona, Y Gallery in New York...).

photo credit : d.r.