Jon Routson

Jon Routson (born 1969 in Washington, D.C.) is an American artist working in video, new media, and conceptual art. He is based in Baltimore, Maryland.

Education Routson attended Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, Maryland. After briefly attending the Maryland Institute College of Art, he received a bachelor's degree from University of Maryland, College Park in 1993. Routson went on to earn his MFA from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2003. In between his degrees, Routson worked as an artist assistant under painter Marilyn Minter and video artist Vito Acconci in New York.

Work Routson is primarily known for his video work, particularly his use of bootleg recording. Between 1999 and 2004, Routson made numerous recordings of contemporaneous Hollywood films using a handheld video camera inside a movie theater. Routson would balance the camera somewhere on his person and intentionally not look through the viewfinder. The videos often ended up largely obscuring the movie screen, either by angle or silhouette. For instance, Routson's recording of The Passion of the Christ blocked the movie's subtitles behind the back of a theatre seat. While such recordings, known as camrips, are commonly uploaded on peer-to-peer file sharing sites, Routson's works were projected on the wall of art galleries. Routson showed numerous bootlegs in two shows at the Team Gallery in New York City in 2003 and 2004.

Other of Routson's projects include a photography series in which he takes or purchases photographs of shopping-mall Easter bunnies sitting or standing by themselves, and the 2003 work My Guitar in which Routson displayed his Fender guitar along with a "For Sale" flyer. Another, however, describes his appropriation work as "lazy" and "vampiric".

Exhibition and representation Routson is represented by the Team Gallery in New York City. Below is a list of selected solo and group exhibitions.

2009 Team Gallery, New York, NY, Arcangel, Pinard, Routson

2007 Current Gallery, Baltimore, MD, feel this dead vibration

2004 Team Gallery, New York, NY, recordings II

2003 Team Gallery, New York, NY, recordings

White Columns, New York, NY, Mama’s Boy

2002 MoCA-D.C., Washington, D.C., Jon Routson

Flat, New York, NY, Episode II

2001 Team, Project Room, New York, Carrie/Porky's: Originality, Neatness, and Hygiene

1999 CRP Gallery, Brooklyn, NY and thing.net, Jon Routson's Bootleg

1992 Dooley LeCappelaine Gallery, New York, NY, Free Kittens