sampling the world
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Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Aug 26, 2011; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8
sampling the world JEFFREY GIBSON’S VIGOROUSLY VERSATILE WORKS AN INVITATION TO THE UNLIKELY Art Issues MALIN WILSONPOWELL For the Journal
Although it may be hard to believe, for those unfamiliar with Jeffrey Gibson’s previous paintings and installations, his eye-dazzling new body of paintings created for this exhibition in Santa Fe is comparatively subdued. Although these constructed images are very bright, in earlier series he uses prismatic neon palettes that nod to the bioluminescence of undersea creatures and the phosphorescent panache of Mardi Gras. Not only did those paintings look like they could light up the night, they also look like they are born with a shimmer in the dark igniting sparks and piercing shards of color as well as swirling clouds of paint. Gibson’s primary practice is a pastiche aesthetic that goes back to indigenous cultural exchanges, i.e., TRADE, along with the art world’s sea change through the collages of Braque and Picasso. It is not a style so much as an attitude of openness to “sampling” what the world has to offer. Gibson’s dynamic contemporary mash-ups revel in the processes that bring his rambunctious compositions into existence, and they arrive with a blizzard of associations. Gibson combines polymorphic sources and possibilities with serious and far-reaching intentions. They prompt not only re-considerations of art but, also, of the world. All of the paintings in TRADE are un-stretched like hides, and some are hand-stitched with a heavy sinew recalling the assembly of Native American rawhide or parfleche bags and boxes. All of the canvasses are also embellished with glass beads and some with steel studs, lending a touch of street savvy. Tassels of glass beads surrounded by what look like plaited bead scrunchies for holding long hair in a pony tail are suggestive not only of a child’s natural bounce, or the swish of hanging decorations during a ceremonial dance, or the everyday pleasure of watching movement from behind, or, maybe, the even more exotic and tawdry gyrating of burlesque pasties. These works are vigorously versatile. There’s always a surplus of metaphors in every aspect of a Gibson painting, including his use of contrapuntal and complementary colors, in the use of the grid and its violations, in the central framing and destabilizing vectors. A cosmopolitan citizen of the world, Gibson was born in 1972 in Colorado, and, as the son of a civil engineer, lived a nomadic existence, moving to South Carolina, Germany and Korea. He clearly has an appetite for waking up in new places and seeing what he can see in both museums and markets. Joie de vivre tempered by a worldly maturity permeates his work. No stranger to Santa Fe, Gibson first studied sculpture with Ernest Mirabal at Nambé Pueblo in 1992. A graduate of The Art Institute of Chicago in 1995, he received a Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians Tribal Scholarship in 1996 to further his studies, and completed his Masters of Art degree at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998. This particular group of Gibson’s paintings is informed by work during his student years in the North American collections department of Chicago’s Field Museum: “One of the things that struck me was the variety and the origins of materials that objects were made from. An object categorized as being of native or indigenous origin may have been made with glass beads that came from Italy or Poland.” Gibson acknowledges his “… references to multiple painting histories, including hard edge geometric abstraction, Op Art, AbEx, Futurism, Pattern and Decoration, plus street graffiti. Other sources that I look to include Native American textile and basketry weaving, geometric beadwork, and parfleche container painting. Being Native American (Choctaw/Cherokee), I have grown up aware of these objects and I am always considering their relationship to modernist concepts of abstraction.” Gibson’s insouciant and deeply considered work is a reminder that not enough has been made of mainstream modernism’s borrowings from Native American art. Although his predecessors in painting and collage include Braque, Picasso, Hanna Hoch, Kurt Schwitters, Robert Motherwell and James Rosenquist, his empowered capacity to deploy fragments that resolve their own internal concerns with metaphorical external concerns is closer to the work of Roy Dowell, who is based in L.A. Gibson has the same sensibility of open-ended, finely nuanced connectivity that offers seemingly endless metamorphosis. Like Dowell – who studied performance and video at Cal Arts – and is noted for his combination of meditative and nervous surface interactions, there is a similar performative cast to Gibson’s bold acts of collage. Standing behind Gibson’s well-informed orientation at the very center of contemporary art are also the breakthroughs of painter Kay Walking Stick, performance artist James Luna, and sculptor Jimmie Durham, all internationally recognized artists born Native American.
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sampling the world
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Durham, who has lived in Europe since 1994, writes eloquently about Gibson, subtitling his essay “Mythmaker or Our Miles Davis.” He speculates that in the license the younger painter takes, “Gibson might be our Miles Davis.” Durham makes important linkages between Native American and African American gifts to the world. African Americans gave “Music so good that the rest of the world couldn’t help but steal it, copy it, and join it.” Scholar John C. Mohawk (1945-2006) first introduced me to the incomparable gifts Native Americans have given the world in philosophy, political theory, technology, agriculture and culture (as explicated in Jack Weatherford’s book “Indian Givers”). Gibson’s dedication to and finesse in the arena of amplified abstraction reminds us that much of Western art has been confined to literary illustration and a servant to narrative, and that most of the world’s indigenous art — or, in other words, most of the world’s art — is abstract. By operating with fresh aplomb and sober sophistication, Durham sees Gibson operating outside the trap of identity enforced by colonizers. Although Gibson has been included in at least three group exhibitions in both Santa Fe and Albuquerque since 2008, TRADE is his first solo show gracing our city. Hopefully, there will be many more one-person exhibitions since his is a performance to watch. Gibson’s smart paintings are suave, innovative, exuberant, generous in spirit, and an invitation to engage with unlikely materials and cultural interventions. If you go WHAT: Jeffrey Gibson: TRADE WHERE: 222 Shelby Street Gallery WHEN: Will continue through Sept. 25. Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. By appointment Sunday and Monday, call 505-699-2833. COST: Free CONTACT: 982-8889 or info@222shelbystreet. com
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JASON MANDELLA/COURTESY 222 SHELBY STREET Three Bars is a 2011 acrylic on recycled and collaged painting with glass beads and steel studs by Jeffrey Gibson.
Blister in the Sun is a 2011 acrylic on recycled and collaged painting with glass beads and steel studs by Jeffrey Gibson.
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sampling the world
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Dusk is a 2011 collage and acrylic on paper by Jeffrey Gibson.
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