Culver, Los Angeles
Jeffrey Gibson
In Such Times
Roberts & TiltonRoberts & Tilton is pleased to present In Such Times, a comprehensive exhibition of new work by Jeffrey Gibson. Drawing influences from popular music, fashion, literature, theory, and his own Cherokee and Choctaw heritage, Gibson's work recontextualizes the familiar to offer a succinct commentary on cultural hybridity and the assimilation of modernist artistic strategies in contemporary art. "In such times, clowns become witnesses" are the words of American writer Nelson Algren, as quoted in Sister Corita Kent's 1968 serigraph Damn Everything But The Circus. Furthermore, the title of Kent's print references the opening words from E.E. Cummings' Him: A Play, which proclaims "Damn everything but the circus!" (1927). Much like the central character in Algren's books, the clown - always the eternal outsider - attempts yet never succeeds. Gibson's current body of work, produced in one of the most politically tumultuous times in recent history, uses exquisite simplicities, concise statements, and commanding clarity to express the constructions of human life and its intersectional connections. The revolutionary message of this particular aesthetic lies in its visceral interpretations and appropriations politicized through personal investment. Gibson's interplay of word and form deftly reveals the micro-visible notations of a larger network of cultural and visual Imperialism set to the beat of our musical and literary greatest hits. Forthcoming solo exhibitions include a traveling mid-career survey originating at The Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO (March 2018) and an installation based exhibition of new work at The Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Clinton, NY (September 2018). Gibson is represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Museum of The American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the National Gallery of Canada; the Nasher Museum, North Carolina; the Nerman Museum, Kansas; the Newark Museum of Art, New Jersey; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas; Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire; and the Denver Art Museum. In Such Times is Jeffrey Gibson's first solo exhibition at Roberts & Tilton.