Jim Dine Tools and Dreams

“His relationship with tools has always been intensely personal, complex, poetic, but also euphoric.”

Jim Dine reveres tools, not merely as tools of the trade, but as symbols of creation and devotion. This subject matter stems from Dine’s childhood growing up in his grandfather’s hardware store in Cincinnati, where he played with pieces of pipe, hammers and screwdrivers. Discover how these formative experiences continue to influence his work today. This hard-back publication celebrates the motif, for which Dine has become synonymous, illustrating over fifty works on paper, in a wide variety of mediums, dating from 1970 to 2024.

Tools and Dreams includes an essay by co-director David Cleaton-Roberts exploring Dine’s developing vocabulary over the years, beginning with his precise mechanical renderings of tools in the 1960s and 70s to his most recent depictions of monolithic standing hammers, unlike any prints that Dine has previously made.

Publisher: Cristea Roberts Gallery