November 19 - December 20, 2022

Reception:  Thursday November 20, 5:30-7:30pm

Gallery Paule Anglim is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Jerome Caja  (1960-1995).

Commemorating the colorful life of the San Francisco artist and drag queen legend, the exhibition coincides with the launch of The Jerome Project, a web-site forum for information and gathering of the history of the artist’s life and works. A special Launch Party event at Gallery Paule Anglim is scheduled for Wednesday, November 19th, from 5:30-7:30pm.

A documentary film, Jerome and the Art of Sainthood, is now in production, and film clips will be shown at the Jerome Project Launch Party on November 19th.

The exhibition will feature Caja’s extraordinary mixed media paintings assembled from thrift store artifacts, transformed with nail polish and makeup into narrative “icons” blending Catholicism and lurid gay sexuality.

I love to hide, but to be in public. I love to-- like clowns. I love to be unknown and do things. Plus it's a really interesting life to interact with people. The drag queen thing is pretty obvious and just the fact that I love to tell stories. That's a big influence in my work. I like to tell stories.*

Jerome’s work has been exhibited at SFMoMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Berkeley Art Museum.  After receiving his MFA in 1986 from the San Francisco Art Institute he showed his work in small alternative San Francisco galleries until it was featured in the 1991 exhibition “Facing the Finish” at SFMoMA.

…when I work, I have a working behavior and it's even less intellectual thought; it's more habitual. It's something that I just do. I just go into it and just do it. Usually I'm telling a story and playing and chatting with myself. 'Cause that's what my painting is, it's me talking to myself, telling jokes, or making a statement, or losing my temper, or whatever. Usually that's what I'm doing, when I'm painting, I'm talking to myself, I'm having a private conversation.*

*excerpts from the Archives of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution, 1995 Oral History interview with Jerome Caja by Paul Karlstrom.