Jimmy Raskin

Jimmy Raskin (b. 1970, Los Angeles) is a New York-based artist who has been actively exhibiting and staging "lecture-performances" since the mid-1990s. While he started as a poet, Raskin stopped writing poetry at the age of 19 to focus on exploring and manifesting the conditions under which "the Poem" could remain an achievable aim in our current cultural conditions.

Raskin's work is characterized by a theatrical multimedia approach that combines writing with sculptures and the production of props for his lecture-performances. His illustrational project articulates a dualistic cosmology that attempts to capture and affirm the fundamental opposition between the "Spirit of the restless Poet" and "Critical Distance."

His exhibitions and performances include P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Thread Waxing Place, Foundation 20 21, Greene-Naftali, Cooper Union, Miguel Abreu Gallery, SculptureCenter (all in New York), as well as at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Real Art Ways, Hartford, The Swiss Institute, Paris, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.