Jeffrey Gibson: Beyond the Horizon

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Kavi Gupta presents Beyond the Horizon, a solo show of new works by Jeffrey Gibson, acclaimed visual artist and 2019 MacArthur Fellow.

Gibson’s aesthetic position is rooted in the spaces where narratives collide. The work recontextualizes relationships between popular culture, identity politics, personal experience, memory, and canonized versions of history, inviting viewers to question the myths and assumptions that empower contemporary social structures.

For Beyond the Horizon, Gibson brings together four bodies of work, integrating a broad mix of source content, including a dazzling new series of Quilt Block Paintings. The pastiche appearance of these ambitious works is a material reflection their intertextual narratives. Says Gibson, “My grandmothers made quilts, and I collect quilts. I’m drawn to their patchwork quality. If you know where the fabrics are coming from, there’s a story that can be played out through material culture.”

Images of Indigenous people appear throughout the Quilt Block Paintings, interrogating differences between how Native Americans represent themselves and how they are represented by others. Also interwoven into many of the panels are delicate, beaded objects dating from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries. Taken from Gibson’s private collection, these items were often made for personal reasons by their intended users, and other times made as “whimseys,” so-called because of their value to tourists as objects of wonder and amusement.

Each work in Beyond the Horizon exemplifies Gibson's deft ability to intermingle popular culture, literature, art history, memory, politics, myth, and material meaning. The work incites crucial questions about whose representations of people and cultures should be validated; which memories and artifacts should be exalted; what creative products should be deemed to have constructive social value; and who decides.

Bio: Gibson (b.1972, USA) has exhibited his work extensively in many of the world's most influential cultural institutions. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, NY; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, among others. A 2019 MacArthur Fellow, he holds an MA at the Royal College of Art, London, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA.