MIKE KELLEY GALLERY :
Open Friday 11 am - 6 pm, Saturday & others by appointment
____________________________
5 May, Saturday -
Used with Deceit (The Jeff & Gordon Show)
Show runs through May 21, 2012
in our upstairs Mike Kelley Gallery
FREE Admmission
Reception at 5:00 PM /Performance at 6:30 PM on May 5, 2012.
Show opens in our upstairs Mike Kelley Gallery and will be on display through Monday, 21 May. FREE admission. Open Friday 11 am - 6 pm, Saturday & others by appointment.
JEFF FOYE and GORDON WINIEMKO are artists who create work together, mostly videos. They call themselves JEFF AND GORDON. Their work often uses the subtleties of language to form double meanings, puns and metaphors. Humor seems to be the foundation of their work and what they might call the "social sphere", is sometimes lauded and critiqued simultaneously.
Their work is clever, even intellectual. One experiences their work in the same way one experiences poetry. It requires focus. You might have to view it again to pick up on the nuance and humor of their work. It has a quiet aesthetic, is layered with meaning, and as mentioned before, it contains artful use of language.
Their act of lauding and criticizing something at the same time is a paradoxical yet effective tactic (whether they intend it or not). For one performance, they discussed movies as movie critics would but in a mildly facetious tone. They also made clear that they enjoy discussing things that way (kind of pretentiously) and the fact that they can do it. In another work of theirs, a video shows them sitting at a coffee shop face-to-face, drawing each other in sketch books.
The video is funny; the viewer never sees what the artists are drawing and the act seems absurd. Ultimately, the video seems to poke fun at what
would be a most bohemian act done at the most bohemian place; but its done by the most bohemian themselves: JEFF AND GORDON.
JEFF AND GORDON will tie all of Beyond Baroque’s areas of interest together with one exhibition including sculpture, video installation and a performance in the center’s theater on the evening of the opening.
Winiemko further explains the group’s inspiration for this new work: “Being mistaken for Jeff Gordon [the driver] on Facebook pointed us towards working with the arbitrariness of identity. We just happen to be mistaken with a race car driver. And in this 15-minutes-of-fame world, who gets to use the identity of Jeff? And Gordon? And JEFF AND GORDON?”
Exhibition curated by Carleton Christy.
