Jeffrey Gibson

The gallery is pleased to present new work by Jeffrey Gibson. This exhibition will be the second solo show of Gibson’s work at the gallery.

Jeffrey Gibson’s paintings and sculptures are inspired by the traditional craft and modern arts of Native American cultures. His sense of pride and desire to reclaim ownership of these histories counter the potentially negative connotations of craft that have been placed onto Native American Art, situating his work within the pantheon of abstract modernism.

The ironing board – a patented product in the United States by 1892 – was designed to provide the average person with pristinely pressed clothing. It quickly became a symbol of the home and the gendered role within it. Gibson removes the board’s stand and mounts it on the wall, replaces its traditional protective cover with painted rawhide – transforming the domestic object into a Shield. Likewise, the Everlast punching bag, which first emerged in a military context, is now recognized as a symbol of masculinity. Gibson replaces the covering of the punching bags with heavily adorned wool blankets and some with his own repurposed paintings. His use of glass beads, jingles, fringe and metal studs collectively express “sub-cultural and fashion alternatives to the mainstream that signal defiance and rejection of hetero-normative culture”.

Gender neutrality is implied in these normally gendered materials. The viewer is left to their emotional relationship to the artwork, a fusion of abstract elements and symbols that force the viewer to question the hybrid norms of our time. These qualities are embodied in Gibson’s new figurative sculptures. Standing between three to four feet tall, these hyper-adorned figures exude both fetishism and beauty.

Jeffrey Gibson attended The Art Institute of Chicago (BFA) and The Royal College of Art, UK (MA). He is half-Cherokee, a member of The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and was raised in the United States, Germany, and South Korea. Gibson’s artworks are in the permanent collections of many major art museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, and the Denver Art Museum. In 2013 he had one-person exhibitions at The ICA Boston, National Academy Museum NYC, and the Rollins Museum. In 2014 he will have a one-person exhibit at The Denver Museum of Art.