Jeffrey Gibson

Jeffrey Gibson.JPG

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, 2018

Ocean House

Jeffrey A. Gibson (1972) is a Choctaw-Cherokee painter and sculptor, based in Hudson, New York.

Gibson’s artwork intermingles elements of traditional Native American art with contemporary artistic references. Thus powwow regalia, 19th century parfleche containers, and drums are seamlessly merged with elements of Modernist geometric abstraction, Minimalism, and Pattern and Decoration.

A review on the exhibit including this piece: “This beading is done much more elaborately and extensively on the surface of a boxer’s heavy punching bag, two of which (from a larger series) hang from the ceiling. More clearly Indigenous in pattern and materials, including the use of fringe, these sculptural objects are metaphors for a body—and people—under assault, but perhaps also are a tool for learning how to fight back. It’s on one of these punching bags that the phrase “Last night a dj saved my life” appears. After all, the roots of house music are in the creation of alternative spaces for queer men of color to gather, dance, and celebrate each other. With SAY MY NAME, one of two beaded weavings mounted on canvas in the exhibition, Gibson has run a set of pronouns down the center in red cursive: “She, He, They, Ze, Her,” etc., ending in “We.” Names create, summon, and hail. Gibson’s gender-pronoun hopping reflects the fluidity in his work between Indigenous and Western, image and text, visibility and marginalization. The aesthetic and the social expand hand in hand.”

Jeffrey Gibson’s “I AM A RAINBOW TOO”

JEFFREY GIBSON BREAKS THE RULES AT THE DENVER ART MUSEUM

This video was made when Jeffrey Gibson was Native Arts Artist-in-Residence at the DAM. The video he made during that time "one becomes the other" will be on view at the DAM in "Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer" May 13-August 12, 2018. https://denverartmuseum.org/exhibitions/jeffrey-gibson

Works appear in

  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

  • the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Canada,

  • the Nasher, the Nerman, Crystal Bridges, and the Denver Art Museum.

Recent solo exhibitions include

  • SCAD Museum of Art (Savannah and Atlanta)

  • The National Academy Museum in New York

  • The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston

  • Cornell Museum of Fine Art.

  • This Is the Day, Blanton Museum of Art, July 14 - September 29, 2019