Jeff Gibson “Definitions & Taxonomies”

Theodore:Art

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For his first solo show at Theodore:Art, Jeff Gibson presents a grid of one hundred framed archival ink-jet prints on paper, comprising fifty satirical definitions and fifty product taxonomies. The definitions represent the latest iteration of the artist’s ongoing project dupe, a mock-psychologisitic dictionary of pathological conditions nailing some of the many ways we deceive ourselves and others, a compendium of dissimulation that seems especially apt in the current socio-political moment. The taxonomies, composed of Google-sourced, shape-fitted typological arrangements of a broad variety of goods and merchandise, are studies in commercial form that lay bare the visual logic of the online commodity come-on. “The behavioral definitions and product taxonomies I’ve been penning and assembling for years now grew out of my love of dictionaries, compendia, and illustrated encyclopedia. I’m fascinated by typological systems, codes of social and cultural conduct, or any institutional effort at fixing meaning or aesthetic standards.” —Jeff Gibson, FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art catalogue, 2018.

Jeff Gibson is an Australian-born artist and occasional critic who has worked in a variety of media and contexts—photography, video, prints, posters, banners, and books for galleries and public spaces. A former senior editor of Art & Text magazine, Gibson moved to New York in 1998 to work for Artforum, where he is currently managing editor. Since arriving in New York, he has produced two artist’s books (Dupe: A Partial Compendium of Everyday Delusions [2000] and Sarsaparilla to Sorcery [2007]), exhibited on the Panasonic Astrovision screen in Times Square as part of Creative Time’s “59th Minute” program, and mounted solo shows at the New York Academy of Sciences, Stephan Stoyanov Gallery (New York), and The Suburban (Chicago and Milwaukee). Throughout January 2011, two of the artist’s videos, Smoke and Asylum (both 2010), were projected onto the facade of the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, as part of a curated series presented by Light Work and the Urban Video Project. His video Metapoetaestheticism, 2013, was exhibited in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. In 2016, Gibson produced a billboard, titled Armagarden, for the I-70 Sign Show, a curated program of artworks occupying advertising sites on the Missouri interstate. In conjunction with this project, he also produced a foldout poster for the Sunday opinion pages of the Columbia Tribune. Gibson’s work was included in the “Digital Infinity” section of the 2018 Front International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art.