Project10: obby obby

ZEPHYR GALLERY

PROJECT

10

obby obby November 6 – December 28, 2015

Joel McDonald

obby obby Joel McDonald’s departure from exhibiting art as a draughtsman has yielded an expanding cross-disciplinary practice that reveals his work as a quilter and horticulturist. obby obby marks an occasion for the artist to obfuscate ideas that were formerly presented in greater detail, reminiscent of a graphic novel. McDonald’s work, particularly his large format narrative drawings for which he is most known, often deals with issues related to his personal history with religion, sexuality, fear of death and opposition to conservative Midwestern values. His works can communicate a certain gloom and doom bleakness, but they’re infused with an appreciation for adolescent humor, referencing heavy metal imagery, sexual and digestive bodily functions, and vivid depictions of skulls, horned devils, human vice and depravity.

McDonald decodes the processes of quilting and plant cultivation, from the materials and tools to the patterns and species that he uses, revealing a multifaceted artistic practice that is informed by alternative social networks and hidden societies, as well as science, evolution, art history, and philosophy. His interest in horticulture, particularly aimed at the cultivation of exotic orchids and carnivorous plants, was inspired in part by Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief. The sensitivity and creative decision making that is often associated with art making extends to McDonald’s enthusiasm for gardening and his care for plants. Both activities require aesthetic considerations, spatial arrangement abilities and deep concentration.

Quilting offers McDonald both an aesthetic and intellectual exchange with pioneering female artisans who developed a set of geometric quilt patterns long before the mid-twentieth century when American Art became preoccupied with analogous late modernist visual investigations of minimalism and abstract color field panting. He finds inspiration in their handwork and labor-intensive process, and is intrigued by the peculiar names that often accompany traditional patterns.

The central installation in the exhibition features three beds aligning the downstairs gallery wall. Each bed, covered in a quilt made

by McDonald, signifies three basic human activities that, for most of us, occur in a bed. We all typically dream, have sex and die while lying in a bed. As he began researching traditional quilts he noticed peculiar associations between the pattern names and these themes that pervade his other work. For the dream quilt McDonald chose the traditional wild goose chase pattern, for sex he adopted young man’s fancy, and death is signified by a pattern called tunnels.

McDonald subverts the “pastoral” associations with craft traditions by using his craft knowledge as an aid in his own explorations of universal themes related to the human condition. His work is not a romanticization of craft tradition, but rather an exercise in learning a certain skill and challenging himself to bend or mend material and process to meet his own specific conceptual needs.

For McDonald, quilts and plants, like drawings and sculptures, are objects for exploring personal issues. Cutting, sewing and gardening provide a temporary reprieve from his more outwardly expressive work and channel the dexterity, concentration and conceptual discipline required in these different creative paths.

This break in his studio routine has led to new methods for creating work that, while radically different in form, still resonates his ongoing fixations about our mortality and sexual urges.

Embedded within McDonald’s artistic rationale for creating the work in the show are personal and political intentions. Titling the show obby obby becomes a deliberate dig at a certain store that prevailed upon the Supreme Court to deny female employees the same access to certain contraceptives, which were intended to be universally available under the 2010 Affordable Care Act. As a perhaps not so subtle nod to craftivism and to his disagreement with business owners who feel that their religious beliefs should govern their business practices, as well as his opposition to the court decision that grants them this right, McDonald erects a subversive lobby for his hobbies in the gallery.

JOEY YATES 2015

Artist Biography Joel McDonald (born 1978; and lives and works in Louisville,Kentucky) He received his BFA in Photography and Drawing from the University of Louisville. He has participated in two two-person shows at Zephyr Gallery, More or Less with Letitia Quesenberry in 2010 and Autobiographies with Sarah Lyon in 2012. Among several group exhibitions McDonald was included in the 2011 Summer Heat show at Land of Tomorrow gallery in Louisville and the 7 Borders exhibit at The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft in 2013. He is currently showing in the After The Moment: Reflections on Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati.

Curator Biography Joey Yates is a Louisville native, curator, teacher and musician. He joined the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft (KMAC) as Associate Curator in May 2012 beginning with a solo show from acclaimed sculptor and furniture designer Wendell Castle. Yates recently curated Simone Leigh’s solo exhibition Crop Rotation and was co-curator for White Glove Test: Louisville Punk Flyers 1978-1994.

Other shows since at KMAC include Second Life, an exhibition that underscored taxidermy and other uses of animal and insect bodies in modern and contemporary art, as well as The 7 Borders, an exhibition that explored Kentucky’s regional identity by showcasing artistic connections between the Commonwealth of Kentucky and its seven border states. With these and other shows Yates has helped shape the museum’s expanding program, examining the relationship between contemporary art, folk art and craft.

Exhibition Checklist Joel McDonald

This We Do In Bed: Sex, Dream, Die Sex: Young Man’s Fancy, 2015, cotton, and polyester, 93” x 51” Dream: Wild Goose Chase , 2015, cotton and polyester, 93” x 56” Die: Tunnel, 2015, cotton and polyester, 90” x 57” Dream Drawing, 2015, ink and acrylic on bristol board, 120” x 80” Bunker #2: Death Contemplation Chamber, 2015, lumber, wire, PVC pipe, fogger, HID light, duct, fans, hardware cloth, pond liner, cotton, polyester, and plants, dimension variable Look What We’re Doing?, 2004, graphite on paper, 31.625” x 20.5”

Zephyr Gallery Artist Board Patrick Donley Peggy Sue Howard Chris Radtke Michael Ratterman Brenda Wirth

Artist Partners

Ken Hayden Matt Meers Robert Mitchell Joel Pinkerton Letitia Quesenberry Reba Rye

PROJECT 10: obby obby Joey Yates Jessica Oberdick Robert Mitchell Chris Radtke Peggy Sue Howard Patrick Donley

Curator Project Manager Graphic Design Exhibition Co-Coordinator Exhibition Co-Coordinator Art Preparator

Image Credits Front Cover: Joel McDonald Sawtooth: (back detail), 2015, cotton and polyester Center Page: Joel McDonald obby obby: (detail), 2015, mixed media, photo credit: Joel McDonald

The mission of Zephyr Gallery is to serve as a platform to incubate, advocate, and facilitate innovative ideas in art and artistic practices in the region. In 2014, Zephyr launched an ongoing Project series with curated proposal-based exhibitions as well as collaborations with universities, colleges, and cultural institutions. Project 10: obby obby is the tenth exhibition in this series.

610 East Market Street | Louisville, KY 40202 www.zephyrgallery.org | Thursday–Saturday, 11–6