The Collection

Samuel Levi Jones is a multidisciplinary artist whose abstract paintings, objects, and installations interrogate power, history, and representation through the physical deconstruction of books. Working with encyclopedias, law books, medical texts, art history volumes, and other institutional reference works, Jones strips these objects of their content, dismantling their covers, bindings, and spines before sewing them into painterly grids and collaged fields. The resulting compositions bear loose threads, stained fabrics, and weathered textures that expose both the fragility and authority of the systems these books represent. By dismantling and reconfiguring these materials, Jones questions who is included or excluded from history, reframing the narratives encoded within cultural and academic institutions.

Jones was trained as a photographer before turning to painting and installation. He earned a BA in Communication Studies from Taylor University, a BFA from the Herron School of Art and Design (2009), and an MFA in Studio Art from Mills College (2012). In 2014, he was awarded the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize by the Studio Museum in Harlem, recognizing his incisive engagement with identity, history, and systemic inequities.

His work has been featured in exhibitions such as The Empire is Falling (The Contemporary Dayton, OH), Left of Center (Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields), Infinite Blue (Brooklyn Museum, NY), Solidary & Solitary: The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection (Smart Museum, Chicago), and Unbound (Studio Museum in Harlem). Jones’s works are held in major public and private collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Rubell Family Collection, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields.