Dog on the Forge

'I keep going because, like the woman who swallowed the knives and nails, I can't stop.' - Jim Dine

Jim Dine is an exceptional artist who works across a seemingly boundless range of media--painting, printing (etching, lithography, linocuts, serigraphy and more), drawing, sculpture, photography, poetry, performance art and bookmaking. Unlike artists who focus on a single medium, Dine, since his first works made while still at high school, has--over the course of seven decades--explored and respectfully disrespected materials and processes. He takes this approach to a new intensity in Dog on the Forge, the book accompanying his exhibition of the same name at the Palazzo Rocca, a Collateral Event at La Biennale di Venezia. Here Dine re-invents some of his most beloved motifs, including Pinocchio, antique sculpture, hearts and tools, all in eclectic combinations of media such as painted bronze and collage on canvas. The results, vibrating with restless, sometimes frenzied energy, are a transcendent leap into the unpredictable future of Dine's never-ceasing creativity.