Visiting Artist:
Jeffrey Gibson
Wednesday, November 30, 6:30p
Sleeper Auditorium
About Jeffrey Gibson
Combining craft media with painting, sculpture, installation, video, and performance, Jeffrey Gibson’s
work simultaneously builds on traditions of geometric abstraction found in both modern art and his own
cultural heritage. Raised in the United States and abroad, Gibson is a member of The Mississippi Band of
Choctaw Indians and is half Cherokee. His work blends his upbringing and diverse interests to explore
issues of personal and cultural memory, mining both for moments of intimacy, community, and selfrealization. His works often directly or indirectly represent the body, referencing traditions of adornment
and performance as disparate as pow-wows and nightclubs, rave culture and 19th-century Iroquois
beadwork. His broad output shares an eclecticism and vibrancy that led fellow American Indian artist
Jimmie Durham to refer to Gibson as “our Miles Davis.”
Gibson was born in Colorado in 1972, and spent much of his childhood abroad in Germany and Korea, as
well as various cities throughout the U.S. That early formative experience of travel and cultural immersion
helped to shape his eclectic and open-ended aesthetic. Gibson received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. With a scholarship raised by the Mississippi Chocktaw Indians,
he was able to travel to London to study at The Royal College of Art, where he earned his Master of Fine
Arts degree. His work can be found in the permanent collections of many major art museums, including
the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Denver
Art Museum. Recent solo exhibitions include Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, the
National Academy Museum in New York, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and the Cornell
Museum of Fine Art. The Denver Art Museum will mount a traveling mid-career survey of his work in
the spring of 2018. He has participated in Greater New York at MoMA PS1, Prospect New Orleans, the
Everson Biennale, and Site Santa Fe. Gibson is a member of the faculty at Bard College and a past TED
Foundation Fellow and Joan Mitchell Grant recipient. He is represented by MARC STRAUS (NYC).
Biography
1972 Born in Colorado.
1995 Earns Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Chicago.
1998 Attends Master of Fine Arts program at the Royal College of Art in London, on a tribal scholarship raised by the Mississippi Chocktaw Indians.
2002 Fellowship through Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
2005 Creative Capital Foundation grant
2009 Totems, solo exhibition at Sala Diaz, San Antonio.
2012 Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and TED Foundation Fellowship.
2012 Joins artist roster at Marc Strauss gallery in New York.
2013 Jeffrey Gibson: Love Song at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.
2015 Included in Greater New York at MoMA PS1
2016 Solo exhibition at Savannah College of Art and Design Museum.
2018 Forthcoming travelling retrospective, Denver Art Museum.
Works
Above: BURN BABY BURN, repurposed wool army
blanket, canvas, glass beads, plastic beads, metal jingles,
nylon fringe. Right: Like A Hammer, 2014, elk hide,
glass beads, artificial sinew, wool blanket, metal studs,
steel, found pine wood block, 56 x 24 x 11".
Above: American History,
2015, wool, steel studs, glass
beads, artificial sinew, metal
jingles, acrylic yarn, nylon
fringe, canvas, 89 x 66 x 5".
CAN’T TAKE MY EYES
OFF OF YOU (detail), 2015,
repurposed wool army
blanket, acrylic paint, tin
cones, canvas, nylon fringe,
glass beads, artificial sinew,
high-fired glazed ceramic,
reclaimed wood, rawhide,
copper jingles, velcro,
72 x 29 x 38".
Press
Jeffrey Gibson Explores Complexities in Human Movement
Forbes, October 2015
Jeffrey Gibson at Marc Strauss Gallery, New York
Droste Effect, October 2015
At Peace with Many Tribes
The New York Times, May 2013
Jeffrey Gibson in Conversation with Janelle Porter
ICA Boston, May 2013
Native American Iconography
Meets Modernist Aesthetic and Material
Hyperallergic, December 2012
MARC STRAUS
Artist Jeffrey Gibson Explores Complexities in
Human Movement in New Show at Marc Straus
Gallery
BY ADAM LEHRER | OCTOBER 29, 2015
It’s hard to find an article about Hudson, New York-based artist Jeffrey Gibson that doesn’t
immediately reference the artist’s Choctaw-Cherokee heritage (and yes, I recognize the irony in
the fact that I just referenced this myself). While Gibson’s Native American heritage is certainly
relevant when discussing his work, it would be reductive to not discuss the plethora of cultures
and sub-cultures that he filters into his paintings, sculptures, and more recently, his
performances. Gibson references club culture, fashion, music (ranging from jazz to punk to East
Indian drumming), politics, literature, abstract art, and so much more in his work.
Jeffrey Gibson, photo courtesy of Michael Wiltbank
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
But inevitably, the label of “Native American artist” comes up, and Gibson has grown more
comfortable with that fact. “I used to worry about the label being limiting,” says Gibson. “But
then you realize that the label isn’t going anywhere and if we are going to describe each other in
this way; you’re whatever and I’m Native American; then I’d rather proactively use it
strategically.”
As he’s grown more comfortable with the label, his work has grown all the more fascinating.
While Gibson is Native American by heritage, he wasn’t raised traditionally. This creates a
magnificent tension in the work. Many of Gibson’s paintings come across as powerful and
striking totems, or as symbols. Gibson recognizes the inherent importance of symbols, and that
being a Native American working in the contemporary art world is symbolic, as is being an
openly gay Native American man.
Jeffrey Gibson, ‘American History,’ all installation and work images courtesy of Marc Straus Gallery
Ultimately, Gibson explores the notion of “outsider-ness” and the ways in which we rectify our
differences. Everyone is an outsider to something; whether it be racially, sexually, culturally, or
otherwise. Gibson, through his interest in human movement and travel, seeks to identify the
ways in which we bridge the gaps that separate us. He is not interested in a “post-racial world,”
he is instead interested in people being able to acknowledge one another in their totalities and
pushing forward.
Gibson is the subject of an exhibit at Marc Straus Gallery that collects much of the artist’s recent
work. In a marvelously curated setup, there is a range of 38 embroidered punching bags that all
make use of Gibson’s literary use of text. Each punching bag represents a perceived “outsider,”
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
ranging from goths to rockers. In addition, beaded wall hangings referencing textiles and
blankets traditionally worn as robes are emblazoned with politically-charged statements. It is a
physically assaulting show idling towards Gibson’s interest in the ritual of movement and its
ability to make a person shed his/herself of self-consciousness and make a statement.
Gibson and I sat down in the middle of his exhibit to discuss race in contemporary art, the
jubilee of dancing, the idiosyncrasies of communication, and (fashion nerds that we are) how
fashion is bleeding into his new work.
Jeffrey Gibson at Marc Straus installation show
Forbes: What do you find so magnetic about the ritual of dance?
Jeffrey Gibson: My dad was a government civil engineer and I grew up in Germany, South
Korea, and the U.S. I started going to nightclubs when I was only 13 in Korea.
When I came back to the U.S. it was about the late ‘80s. I was probably 16 at the time, and it was
the first time that I was too young to get into bars and clubs. I’ve never particularly been
committed to any one type of music so then my friends and I would end up going to hardcore
shows out in the country. Finally I went to a club in D.C. called Trax, it was this huge warehouse
with house music and drag queens.
Forbes: Like a Party Monster type scenario?
JG: Yeah. I remember feeling that the whole house music scene was so promising and tribal
before drugs came in and ruined everything. It felt like you had power to make change and do
things.
Forbes: And you had cousins that were on pow wow circuits?
JG: Pop wow dancing has been in my life forever. What drew me to the pow wow was that
people were young and it’s the one place where you could be of the native tradition but
innovation and drawing attention to oneself was actually celebrated. To me the idea of tradition
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
has always felt like a weight, because I didn’t grow up traditional. But going to grad school and
going to New York, this idea of the relationship between the mind and the body grew
increasingly important to me.
Forbes: And now it’s a huge part of your work?
JG: I’m actually developing some performances. The ones I’ve done at this point have been
experiments, but I got funds this year to produce an actual performance. Meaning it has a
beginning and an end. There’s this cloak that’s being made for me that is equipped with all of
these metal cones. A lot of the performance will come out of me trying to move in this heavy
cloak. My relationship to club culture is something that people still have trouble understanding.
I feel like people who lived through that period get it.
Jeffrey Gibson at Marc Straus installation show
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
Forbes: Or maybe even just people who like to dance; the physical act of forgetting what’s going
on in your head and moving to music is elating in a way that few things are.
JG: There’s also this consciousness shift that happens when you are dancing and if you’re trying
to explain it to people it sounds like you’re describing a dream: you lose your self consciousness
and you enjoy being hot and sweaty.
Forbes: And in your own body.
JG: Yeah and then there’s this collective energy that happens when people are feeling it. I’m
trying to channel that into something that’s performative.
Forbes: I read in the New York Times that you weren’t always comfortable with the inevitable
label of “Native American artist,” how did you gain that comfort?
JG: if you have any sort of public presence, how people see you is totally out of your control. I
think there’s shame attached to being a part of a minority culture, and there’s this desire to
assimilate. I don’t want to expel who I am because I’m not ashamed of it. The other thing that
people talk about in the art world is the idea of “post-race.” I’ve never understood that as a goal
because I think it’s impossible and I have no desire to be post-race.
Forbes: I think it’s worse than that. When people say they don’t see race or that they are postrace they are denying someone’s culture.
JG: And despite coming from a desire to be inclusive and liberal, in a weird way you’re denying
someone’s identity.
Forbes: It’s a manifestation of guilt, almost.
JG: Totally. My hope is that we can get over the hump of whatever makes us uncomfortable
talking about race.
Jeffrey Gibson at Marc Straus installation show
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
Forbes: It seems like a true post-race world would be one in which we acknowledge our cultural
and racial differences, try and understand then, and learn from them.
JG: It’s almost about amplifying your differences. If I recognize all of who you are in your
totality and if you recognize who I am in all of my totality, then it will get complicated and
messy. But that’s the reality of it.
Jeffrey Gibson at Marc Straus installation show
Forbes: You’ve achieved a lot of success over the last few years, why do you think it took the art
world some time to catch on?
JG: The biggest criticism of my work over the last 20 years has been that there are too many
things going on. In 2007, someone who was a few years younger than me said to me, “Don’t get
frustrated and hang in there a few more years. The people who are going to understand your
work aren’t in a place to do anything for you right now, but they’re coming up.”
Like clockwork, when I turned 40 I started getting calls from people that had been following my
work for a few years and are now curators.
I think that it goes towards an idea of that physical and visceral experience before an intellectual
one. Suddenly my generation understood the excitement and the need to construct. There’s a
physical engagement here and then there’s an intellectual engagement over here.
Forbes: I think the people that might be appreciating your work are those that grew up getting
used to being inundated with imagery.
JG: Totally.
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
Forbes: It’s crazy how much people know these days: the entire history of cinema, the entire
history of pop music, and the entire history of fashion. They don’t shut down at a certain level of
sensory.
JG: At the same time, attention is a learned skill that we just don’t learn anymore.
Forbes: You’re a self-described nomad. I was curious if when you’re traveling you’re looking at
things as an artist to find influence, or if you just see things that end up influencing you?
JG: I try to pay attention to what I’m already paying attention to. I was kind of getting freaked
out earlier this week because I don’t know what work I should do next. But then I took out these
sketches and I wanted to take things that I’ve done and start wearing them. So, we’re going to
make garments. We’re starting with the questions: can a garment be a statement? Can a
garment be a sculpture? Can a garment be political?
Jeffrey Gibson, ‘The Only Way Out is Through’
Forbes: I think so.
JG: Yeah. So All I’ve been doing since New York Fashion Week is watching videos of the runway
shows. I’ve been looking for the moments that ask, “what are the mechanisms at work? What
makes us want to buy this? What makes us think it’s pretty. What makes us think it’s
challenging?” Did you see Rick Owens SS 2016?
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
Forbes: Of course, man. Models wearing models. Amazing.
JG: I love that Rick did something that nobody had ever thought of.
Forbes: He’s genius and he’s hilarious.
JG: That show made me think of Leigh Bowery, and I know all the big designers in the ‘90s like
Galliano and McQueen were going to Leigh Bowery shows.
But a person recently asked if my garments would be commercial and I said probably not. It
goes back to engaging the body.
Forbes: Do you feel that different cultures have regional movements? Like someone in Columbia
might have characteristic movements different than someone in India?
JG: It’s not something I’m particularly interested in, but I would say yes. They do. I guess what
I’m interested in is the question, “How much space is considered appropriate?” Or what is the
appropriate amount of time that you look someone directly in the eye? How do those things
challenge notions of gender and what we consider as being sexual versus intimate? I think we’re
in a place where we are getting increasingly afraid of our bodies in their original states. There’s
something about necessary movement that I’m interested in.
Forbes: I love the punching bags as manifestations for “outsider-ness,” but someone less in tune
with contemporary art might see your punching bags and just think about Floyd Mayweather Do
you worry about your work being misinterpreted.
JG: No, you can’t control that. I just let it go. When you’re an artist in your studio there are all
these strategies to help produce and make. One of my strategies is to not over-think anything.
It’s ok to make work that doesn’t resonate as much as other work. I know the strength of every
piece: text, design, scale, and color. I need to respond differently to each piece, especially
because they are all punching bags. I have to make each one different. Also, I can’t make 40
punching bags a year. I’m at 38 now and that’s taken a few years. So each piece needs to exist by
itself as much as it does as part of a collective. Same thing with the garments: I’ll need 40 people
wearing them for it to make sense as a show.
Forbes: When you know a piece isn’t your best work, do you ever regret making it?
JG: Honestly, I have no regrets about art. I know when you’re a young artist and people tell you
not to rush and that things come in their own time, the young artist doesn’t want to hear that.
Most of my career existed in non-profit spaces at museums until I was in my late thirties. I’m
glad, because before that I didn’t have an understanding of the complexity of experience. As an
artist, I get to indulge that. How many adults get to stop eating for three days to see what it does
to their thoughts? Then watch fashion shows for a few days to see if that changes how I look at
something? You get to construct these bizarre scenarios.
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
Forbes: The text in your work is poignant and even literary; did you ever have aspirations of
being a writer?
JG: I did. When I was at the Art Institute of Chicago I studied short story writing and wrote two
short stories. I think that finding a voice is really tough, but words are as slippery as anything
else. I’ve always been really into my titles. I love giving abstract paintings elaborate titles, and
people wouldn’t know how the titles reflected the work, and I’d say because I’m giving image to
these words.
Forbes: You’ve done work that examines Native American influences on the masters like
Rauschenberg and others, as you’ve grown more comfortable with the title of Native American
artist, have you grown to feel more responsible to show people the influence Native American
art has had?
JG: Yes. But I still don’t think I’ve fully realized what is possible when you actually have a
platform. I love the fact that someone in Arizona, Mississippi, or wherever has awareness of my
work. Even if this person might not understand the context of the contemporary art world that I
exist in, there’s more power to it being an image. Native American artists, and non-Native
American artists, have been more important to me as images. It’s different when you get to
know someone and they turn out to be…
Forbes: A flawed human being.
JG: Yeah. I think it’s important that I identify as Native American for them. It’s important that I
identify as queer for them. Is it important that they know me? No.
Forbes: You’ve said you like the idea of traditional art as a form of resistance; do you still feel
that energy of resistance?
JG: Yeah, the weird thing that I think is cool, is that Native American art and the intellectual
discussion that has always surrounded it, is exclusive. Oddly enough that inclusivity can be
resistance to exclusivity. Someone asked me what my dream world would be. And honestly, it
would be Hansel’s loft on Zoolander.
Forbes: (laughs)
JG: (Laughs) Just amazing people hanging out and there’s a skate ramp and someone baking
bread. Maybe you think that’s light or silly, but it’s not.
Jeffrey Gibson’s exhibit is on view at Marc Straus Gallery until December 13
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamlehrer/2015/10/29/artist-jeffrey-gibson-explores-complexitiesin-human-movement-in-new-show-at-marc-straus-gallery/5/
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
Jeffrey Gibson at Marc Straus Gallery, New York
BY MATILDE SOLIGNO | OCTOBER 28, 2015
Marc Straus Gallery, New York presents its third one-person exhibition of work by Jeffrey Gibson.
Gibson creates sculptures and paintings that intermingle more traditional Native American art with
contemporary art and culture. Half Choctaw and half Cherokee, he uses techniques and materials that
are traditional to Native American culture, and elaborates them through his profoundly personal process.
Gibson’s artwork incorporates references to contemporary American culture that are personal to the
artist, such as evocative objects and pop song lyrics integrated into the artwork.
In the upstairs main exhibition room, a series of highly adorned punching bags are surrounded by beaded
wall hangings – referencing materials and textiles used in traditional Native American clothing, such as,
respectively, dancing costumes and robes. Despite the decorations, the punching bags are still
recognizable, and retain a strong reference to that pugilistic world. These as well as the wall hangings are
strong expression of a lush, vivid identity, and incorporate text that represents personal political
statements. In these and other works, Gibson appropriates phrases from social movements to express
immediate issues.
Jeffrey Gibson, repurposed punching bags (2015) at Marc Straus Gallery
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
Jeffrey Gibson, Document 2015 (paint on deer hide) at Marc Straus Gallery
This embodiment of contrasts is conveyed also by Jeffrey Gibson’s new series of monochromatic
paintings on rawhide. Document 2015, on show at Marc Straus Gallery, is the mesmerizing presence of a
deer hide, painted with geometric shapes, hanging from the wall of the small room upstairs. The contrast
between softly painted but precise abstractions and this translucent treated skin accentuates the deer
hide’s materiality – and ultimately gives it a voice. Another immediate, intimate necessity: acknowledging
its presence, as the living creature it once was.
By using wool, steel studs, glass beads, artificial sinew, metal jingles, wood, copper cones, and other
materials of different origin, not only has he addressed the history of craft in Native American everyday
life, but the globalization of trade that invested the production of these materials.
The artist’s contribution to his heritage is in its own way a development of this craft, and belongs to the
realm of Native American craftsmanship as well as to contemporary art.
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
Jeffrey Gibson at Marc Straus Gallery
left: repurposed punching bags
right: IN TIME WE COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE (2015)
IN TIME WE COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE (detail) 2015
Wool, steel studs, glass beads, artificial sinew, metal jingles, canvas, wood
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
Exhibition view, Jeffrey Gibson at Marc Straus Gallery
On Sunday, October 25, Marc Straus hosted a talk addressing the significance of Text & Craft in
Contemporary Art. Panelists were Sara Reisman (Artistic Director and Curator at The Rubin
Foundation), Glenn Adamson (Nanette L. Laitman Director, Museum of Arts and Design), and John
Lukavic (Curator at Denver Art Museum).
The discussion revolved around Native American art representation in the contemporary art world,
proposing a critical view of common conceptions of minority art practices, and addressed the work of
Jeffrey Gibson, who answered questions from the panelists and the public.
Sara Reisman, who chaired the panel discussion, opened by proposing the term ‘decorative conceptual’
to define conceptual art that is well crafted, where artisanal diligence and dedication are still defining
points. She introduced concepts that were then developed by all panelists, such as spiritualism as a key
element in the experience of art in general.
The relationship between craft and contemporary art was the main subject of the talk. Glenn Adamson
highlighted common conceptions of art and craft, where craft is generally regarded as “traditional” and
“necessary,” while art is anti-traditional and unhinged from functionality. In this view, the artist is driven by
ideas, while craft is driven by necessity. This conception comes with a stigma towards craft, considered a
lower endeavor – as reflected by the power relation existing between artist and fabricator (e.g. the artist’s
assistant). The power relationship between contemporary art and craft retraces privilege in society, as
craft is in fact generally associated with women and minorities. As a consequence, craft lies mostly
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
outside of contemporary art, both positively and negatively. Adamson stressed the importance of process
and technique in the realization of an artwork. He supports an empowerment of craft, back to its
Germanic etymology – «Kraft» means «power» – as craft is in his view the most relevant factor to realize
an idea.
Artist Jeffrey Gibson and panelists Sara Reisman and Glenn Adamson at Marc Straus Gallery
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
Talk panelists Sara Reisman, Glenn Adamson and John P. Lukavic at Marc Straus Gallery
John Lukavic questioned Western categorization of culture by bringing the example of the term «pop art»,
that he jokingly defined as «racist», because it assumes that all people share the same reality, which is
obviously not the case. At the same time, «tradition» is a «lazy term», because it doesn’t reflect the
changing nature of cultural practices throughout history and individuals. While detailing some of the
craftsmanship amongst Native Americans, Lukavic raised the topic of the availability of materials (one of
the «necessities» of craft), that nowadays is bound to international trade. In fact, in Jeffrey Gibson’s
artwork some of the traditional cones are printed in Taiwan – another tile in Gibson’s sociopolitical
undercurrent. Using text in artwork as Gibson does has roots in traditional culture, and has been
extensively used by artists to convey political content. In addition, Lukavic denounced the
underrepresentation of American Indian artists in the contemporary art world.
Jeffrey Gibson then answered questions to help define the connections between his personal experience
as a minority and queer artist and his artwork. He talked about music as a key element in his personal
experience, always there to underly important emotional passages of his life as a young artist struggling
with marginalization, largely due to his belonging to a minority both for his ethnicity and his sexual
orientation. Pop song musicians (e.g. Boy George) became his elders, a referral point to look up to, their
music the only way to cope and not feel confined. Their lyrics became mantras that he incorporated in his
artwork. He talked about the disruption of Native American communities by a government program
designed to relocate them from their original home to urban areas and cities. He mentioned his work in
counseling and around the issues connected with Native American identity. He hinted to the ideas behind
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
MARC STRAUS
his punching bag series, recalling that the inspiration for his first adorned punching bag was from an old
photograph of a figure made of sheets, built by an institutionalized patient. For Gibson, appropriation is a
way of having and giving a voice, a practice that is reflected in his whole production.
The talk ended with gallerist Marc Straus reciting a poem of his own writing, inspired by the artwork of
Jeffrey Gibson.
Jeffrey Gibson is on show at Marc Straus Gallery, New York through December 13, 2015
Source: http://www.drosteeffectmag.com/jeffrey-gibson-marc-straus-gallery-new-york/
MARC STRAUS. 299 Grand Street, New York, New York, 10002. 212.510.7646. [email protected]
http://nyti.ms/YHRW7r
ART & DESIGN
At Peace With Many Tribes
By CAROL KINO MAY 15, 2013
HUDSON, N.Y. — One sunny afternoon early this month Jeffrey Gibson paced
around his studio, trying to keep track of which of his artworks was going where.
Luminous geometric abstractions, meticulously painted on deer hide, that hung
in one room were about to be picked up for an art fair. In another sat Mr. Gibson’s
outsize rendition of a parfleche trunk, a traditional American Indian rawhide
carrying case, covered with Malevich-like shapes, which would be shipped to New
York for a solo exhibition at the National Academy Museum. Two Delaunay-esque
abstractions made with acrylic on unstretched elk hides had already been sent to a
museum in Ottawa, but the air was still suffused with the incense-like fragrance of
the smoke used to color the skins.
“If you’d told me five years ago that this was where my work was going to lead,”
said Mr. Gibson, gesturing to other pieces, including two beaded punching bags and
a cluster of painted drums, “I never would have believed it.” Now 41, he is a member
of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and half-Cherokee. But for years, he
said, he resisted the impulse to quote traditional Indian art, just as he had rejected
the pressure he’d felt in art school to make work that reflected his so-called identity.
“The way we describe identity here is so reductive,” Mr. Gibson said. “It never
bleeds into seeing you as a more multifaceted person.” But now “I’m finally at the
point where I can feel comfortable being your introduction” to American Indian
culture, he added. “It’s just a huge acceptance of self.”
Judging from Mr. Gibson’s growing number of exhibitions, self-acceptance has done
his work a lot of good. In addition to the National Academy exhibition, “Said the
Pigeon to the Squirrel,” which opens Thursday and runs through Sept. 8, his pieces
can be seen in four other places.
“Love Song,” Mr. Gibson’s first solo museum show, opened this month at the
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, with 20 silk-screened paintings, a video and
two sculptures, one of which strings together seven painted drums. The smoked elk
hide paintings are now on view in “Sakahàn,” a huge group exhibition of
international indigenous art that opened last Friday at the National Gallery of
Canada in Ottawa. And an installation of shield-shaped wall hangings, made from
painted hides and tepee poles, is at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College
in Winter Park, Fla.
Mr. Gibson also has work in a group exhibition at the Wilmer Jennings Gallery
at Kenkeleba, a longtime East Village multicultural showcase through June 2. Called
“The Old Becomes the New,” it explores the relationship between New York’s
contemporary American Indian artists and postwar abstractionists like Robert
Rauschenberg and Leon Polk Smith who were influenced by traditional Indian art.
Mr. Gibson’s contribution is two cinder blocks wrapped in rawhide and painted with
superimposed rectangles of color, creating a surprisingly harmonious mash-up of
Josef Albers and Donald Judd with the ceremonial bundle.
The work’s hybrid nature has given curators different aspects to appreciate.
Kathleen Ash-Milby, an associate curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of
the American Indian in Lower Manhattan, said she loved Mr. Gibson’s use of color
and his adventurousness with materials, and that he has “been able to be successful
in the mainstream and continue his association with Native art and artists.” (Ms.
Ash-Milby gave Mr. Gibson his first New York solo show, in 2005 at the American
Indian Community House.)
Marshall N. Price, curator of the National Academy show, said he was drawn by
Mr. Gibson’s drive to explore “both the problematic legacies of his own heritage and
the problematic legacy of modernism” through the lens of geometric abstraction.
(Which, he noted, “has a long tradition in Native American art history as well.”)
And for Jenelle Porter, the Institute of Contemporary Art curator who organized
the Boston show, it’s Mr. Gibson’s ability to “foreground his background,” as she put
it, in a striking and accessible way. Ms. Porter discovered his work early last year, in
a solo two-gallery exhibition organized by the downtown nonprofit space Participant
Inc.
“People were raving about the show,” she said. “So I went over there and I was
absolutely floored.”
The work was “visually compelling, and not didactic,” she added. And because
“he’s painting on hide, painting on drums, you have to talk about where it comes
from.”
Mr. Gibson only recently figured out how to start that conversation. Because his
father worked for the Defense Department, he was raised in South Korea, Germany
and different cities in the United States, so “acclimating was normal to me,” he said.
And one of the most persistent messages he heard growing up was “never to identify
as a minority,” he added.
At the same time, because much of his extended family lives near reservations in
Oklahoma and Mississippi, Mr. Gibson also grew up going to powwows and Indian
festivals. He even briefly considered studying traditional Indian art, but instead
opted to major in studio art at a community college near his parents’ house outside
Washington. In 1992, he landed at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.
There, Mr. Gibson, who had just come out as gay, often felt pressured to
examine just one aspect of his life — his Indian heritage, with its implicit cultural
sense of victimhood — when what he really yearned to do was to paint like Matisse
or Warhol. At the same time, he was learning about that heritage in a new way as a
research assistant at the Field Museum aiding its compliance with the 1990 Native
American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
As he watched the Indian tribal elders who frequently visited to examine the
drums, parfleche containers, headdresses and the like in the Field’s collection, Mr.
Gibson was struck by their radically different responses. Some groups “would break
down in tears,” he said. “Or there would be huge arguments.”
He came to see traditional art then “as a very powerful form of resistance” and
to better “understand its relationship to contemporary life.” And nothing else he’d
encountered “felt as complete and fully formed as the objects themselves,” he said.
“It certainly made it difficult for me to go into the studio and paint.”
Yet paint Mr. Gibson did — mostly expressionistic landscapes filled with Disney
characters, like Pocahontas, and decorated with sequins and glitter. His work
continued in a similar vein while he was earning his M.F.A. at the Royal College of
Art in London. Although the Mississippi Band paid for his education, the experience
gave him a welcome break from grappling with concerns about identity, he said, and
a chance “to just look at art and think about the formal qualities of making an
artwork.” (Along the way, he also met his husband, the Norwegian sculptor Rune
Olsen.)
After returning to the United States in 1999, this time to New York and New
Jersey, Mr. Gibson began painting fantastical pastoral scenes, embellishing their
surfaces with crystal beads and bubbles of pigmented silicone, recalling 1970s
Pattern and Decoration art. Those led to his first solo show with Ms. Ash-Milby in
2005, and his inclusion in the 2007 group show “Off the Map: Landscape in the
Native Imagination” at the National Museum of the American Indian, as well as
other group shows.
At the same time, Mr. Gibson was making sculptures with mannequins and
African masks. While struggling to understand Minimalism, he also began to see the
connection between Modernist geometric abstraction and the designs on the objects
that had transfixed him in the Field’s collection.
His 2012 show with Participant, “One Becomes the Other,” proved to be a
turning point. In it, he collaborated with traditional Indian artists to create works
like the string of painted drums, or a deer hide quiver that held an arrow made from
a pink fluorescent bulb. And once he set brush to rawhide, Mr. Gibson said, he was
hooked. As well as being “an amazing surface to work on,” he said, “its relationship
to parchment intrigued me.”
Its use also “positions the viewer to look through the lens that I’d been working
so hard to illustrate.”
But the underlying change, Mr. Gibson added, came from his decision to shed
the notion of being a member of a minority group. Suddenly all art, European,
American and Indian alike, became merely “individual points on this periphery
around me,” he said. “Once I thought of myself as the center, the world opened up.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 19, 2013, on page AR21 of the New York edition with the
headline: At Peace With Many Tribes.
© 2016 The New York Times Company
MARC STRAUS
Native American Iconography Meets Modernist Aesthetic and Material
by Joan Waltemath on December 11, 2012
Installation view of Jeffrey Gibson at Marc Straus (Photo courtesy Marc Straus)
My first impression coming into Je frey Gibson’s solo exhibition at Marc Straus in the Lower East Side
was one of a refined sensual pleasure with a complex edge. ibrant color painted in geometric shapes
on animal hide stretched over trapezoidal forms and ironing boards is the initial entree to an imminent
encounter with the unanticipated.
The evening before Gibson’s show opened, I’d been at lighting designer Linnaea Tillet’s lecture at the
Museum of the City of New York and was still thinking about how countenance is affected by the quality
of light falling on a well-articulated surface. I wondered at the kind of lighting we have embraced in the
name of efficienc , and how it has begun to effect the way we move and think and breathe. A moment in
Gibson’s exhibition began to rescind my generalized lament. His resistance is palpable in his aesthetic
sensibility.
Jeffrey Gibson, “Constellation No. 8″ (Photo by author for Hyperallergic)
The generous yet restrained surfaces of his reflective acrylic paintings are framed with a glimpse into the
deep and sonorous smooth matte of an animal hide. The pairing appears so perfectly attenuated that it
is impossible to separate them, therefore impossible to bring a politically correct fur coat-animal cruelty
discourse to them. In the hands of this artist another, deeper character emerges, something beyond the
reach of contemporary issues.
Yet Gibson’s work is also firmly tied to cultural politics. As a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw
Indians and half Cherokee, the artist draws on his heritage of Native American iconography for his work,
which also takes equally from the history of modernism.
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MARC STRAUS
On the ground floor galler , a series of ironing boards stretched over with deer hides runs along one wall.
The pieces feel like they might be shields, yet the combination of referent and form spin an uncanny web
around their interpretation and land us in the lap of the female form — a virtual terra incognito.
Installation view of Jeffrey Gibson at Marc Straus (Photo by author for Hyperallergic)
The ironing boards’ upright stance sets up a bodily relationship as one approaches, the interior play of
triangles runs both alongside and beyond cubism in search of a dimensional construct to challenge their
relative flatness as objects. Divided into three bands, their depths open up slowly in relationship to the
time it takes to register their evolving complexity. They point and dance all over the place, exciting just
long enough for the subtext to emerge and ground Gibson’s endeavor in seriousness.
Two decorated punching bags of the kind used for training boxers, hang from the ceiling in the main
room of the gallery. Their evocations stem from the dark side of the American heartland. Perhaps they
work best in the gallery context as an expression of cultural memory, an attitude that permeates the
exhibition as a whole. Their tin jingles and beadwork bring to mind Gibson’s Native American ancestry,
while the symbolism of the Everlast bag conjures images of power, perhaps of America’s colonial settlers
decimating the land’s original occupants.
Jeffrey Gibson, “Rawhide Painting 6″ (Photo by author for Hyperallergic)
On the opposite wall a series of small and delicate trapezoidal paintings on goat hide bend and torque
within their odd shaped frames. Closer in one sees sparkles and how the hides are sometimes nailed
together. The variety in Gibson’s surface, its re-workings and localized painterly effects are enriching, but
it’s really through color that he makes himself known. Upbeat and vibrant, the palette ranges around the
wheel.
Upstairs, a group of silk-screened paintings on deer hide hone in on Gibson’s eye for color. Through
a three- or four-color process, the variety of visual relationships expands exponentially. Simple
combinations of overlaid triangles both multiply and diminish the original forms — the results are
unexpected in their depth, variation, and luminosity.
Gibson articulates truth through his materials, which, as Wittgenstein’s dictum states, shows what cannot
be said. In Gibson’s case, his message is a deep emotional truth, born of history and memory, made
present through the motion of his own hands.
Jeffrey Gibson‘s work is on view at Marc Straus Gallery (299 Grand Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
through December 23.
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