This multi-layered exhibition juxtaposes poetry, audio, books, collage, drawings, photographs, sculpture, and digital prints on canvas from 1999 to the present.

Jim Dine: Hot Dream (52 Books) was on view at the Museum Liner Appenzell, Switzerland from June 22 to October 26, 2008. In the exhibition catalogue essay, curator Dr. Roland Scotti wrote that the work, "invent(s) the context for a new melody for the art of Jim Dine, for all the major byways of this seemingly inexhaustible creativity, which combines dream and reality."

Throughout his career, Jim Dine has illustrated many books including the early work on Guillaume Apollinaire's The Poet Assassinated (1968) and Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio (2006). The latter was published by Steidl and accompanied a 2007 exhibition at PaceWildenstein, Jim Dine: Pinocchio. The original 39 hand-colored lithographs used to illustrate the book were exhibited at and later acquired by The New York Public Library for the institution's permanent collection. Dine's other recent books include Aldo et Moi (2007), L'Odyssée de Jim Dine (2007), and The Photographs So Far (2003).

Jim Dine: Hot Dream (52 Books) originated from the artist's desire to produce a series of books-one for each week of the year. Expressions of consciousness, biography and imagination, they represent a meeting point for some of the artist's long-time interests including book-making, drawing and performance. The exhibition unfolds throughout rooms of the gallery and the viewer is immersed in a multi-sensory experience. Books dangle from the ceiling; Dine's voice is heard reading his poetry over a speaker; drawings are pinned to the walls, and in some cases drawn in charcoal directly on the walls. Photographs are juxtaposed with sculpture and posters line the floors as Dine's work and life come alive through a visual profusion of his art, mementoes, photographs, thoughts, and biographical details. Dine "has created new, unexpected relationships between past, present and future," Scotti writes.

Although similar to the installation in Switzerland, the PaceWildenstein exhibition incorporates new, additional works, including two large-scale sculptures of Santa Claus, one in clay, one in plaster, from 2008, that have never before been exhibited.

For nearly five decades, Jim Dine has been the subject of gallery and museum exhibitions worldwide. The artist's exploration of body, memory, and self has been revealed through his painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, performance, and poetry. Jim Dine: Poet Singing (The Flowering Sheets), a new installation of sculpture and poetry inspired by ancient objects in the museum's collection, is currently on view at the Getty Villa in Malibu, California, where it will remain through February 9, 2009. Dine is the first contemporary artist to be invited to exhibit at the Villa. Dine's interest in Greek and Roman art, which he refers to as "the linkup with history as subject," began in 1984 when he made a chance visit to Munich's Glyptothek, a museum of antiquities founded by Ludwig I. Drawn to the sculptures, Dine returned to the museum for many years, drawing and meditating on the antiquities.

Jim Dine (b. 1935) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and studied at the University of Cincinnati and the Boston Museum School prior to receiving his B.F.A. from Ohio University, Athens, where he was also enrolled in the graduate program. The artist moved to New York City in 1958, where he had his first group (1959) and solo (1960) exhibitions. Dine instantly became an active figure in the New York art world, creating and staging many of the first "Happenings" along with artists Allan Kaprow, Lucas Samaras, Red Grooms, Robert Whitman, and Claes Oldenburg. Since his first solo exhibition in 1960, Dine's paintings, sculptures, photography, and prints have been the subject of nearly 290 solo exhibitions worldwide. PaceWildenstein has represented Jim Dine since 1976.

In 2007, Dine was commissioned by the City of Borås, Sweden to create a thirty-foot sculpture of Pinocchio in patinated cast bronze with acrylic paint, entitled Walking to Borås. In 2006 Jim Dine, some drawings, ended a long tour across the United States at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA. The exhibition consisted of nearly 80 works on paper that highlighted Dine's talent at combining painterly techniques into his drawing. The show also traveled to the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio; the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York; and the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Chicago. This exhibition was the most recent major show of Jim Dine's work following eight major surveys and retrospectives that Dine has been the subject of since 1970, including Drawings of Jim Dine, a major traveling retrospective organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2004); Jim Dine: Walking Memory 1959-1969, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY (1999), which traveled to the Cincinnati Art Museum; Jim Dine, Isetan Museum, Tokyo, which travelled to the Museum of Art, Osaka and the Hakone Open Air Museum, Japan (1990-91); Jim Dine: Five Themes, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, (1984-85), which traveled to the Phoenix Art Museum, The Saint Louis Art Museum, the Akron Art Museum, OH, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, and The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and Jim Dine, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (1970).

Dine has been the recipient of multiple awards and honors throughout his career, including the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 10th Annual Medal Award (2005), the prestigious Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Paris (2003), and the Library Lions Award, New York Public Library (2003). In 2000 Dine received an invitation by the Mayor of Siena, Italy, to design the banner for the city's traditional Palio celebration. In 1998 he was elected to the Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, and in 1997 he received an honorary doctorate from the California College of Arts and Crafts. Other important awards include a special commendation by the Friends of the Bezalel Museum (1996); the Pyramid Atlantic Award of Distinction, Washington, DC (1992); and election to the American Academy of and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York (1980).

Dine's work is held in sixty-five important public collections worldwide, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Cleveland Museum of Art; Hakone Open-Air Museum, Hakone-machi, Japan; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Stedelijk Museum; Amsterdam; Tate Gallery; London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.