Jim Shaw is a contemporary American artist whose eclectic practice mines the detritus of pop culture. A keen observer and collector of his country’s cultural output, he has explained, “It's good taste versus not good taste. I realized that I wasn't naturally born to good taste.” In large-scale installations, Shaw recontextualizes imagery from mainstream and religious ephemera, notably curating canvases acquired from charity shops in his ongoing series Thrift Store Paintings. Born on August 8, 1952 in Midland, MI, Shaw received his BFA from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and moved with Mike Kelley, a friend and fellow member of the band Destroy All Monsters, to study at the California Institute of the Arts, where he graduated with an MFA in 1978. Shaw currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and was notable to the subject of a major retrospective at the New Museum in New York in 2015, titled “Jim Shaw: The End is Near.”