Elaborately adorned helmets, large-scale sculptural garments draped on tipi poles, beaded panels, tapestries, weavings, abstract geometric paintings and a new film greet visitors in an outpouring of color to the Wellin Museum’s fall exhibition, Jeffrey Gibson: This is the Day. More than 50 works of sculpture, painting, installation, and video made between 2014 and 2018 are on view.
The Wellin will host a reception for the exhibition opening on Saturday, Sept. 8, from 4 to 6 p.m. Preceding the reception, Gibson and This is the Day curator Tracy Adler, the Johnson-Pote Director of the Wellin Museum of Art, will discuss Gibson’s work at 2:30 p.m. in the Kennedy Center for Theatre and the Studio Arts’ Barrett Lab Theatre. The reception, panel, and exhibition, which closes on Dec. 9, are free and open to the public.
New works in the exhibition include a group of five elaborately adorned helmets that will be presented to the public for the first time at the Wellin, alongside a series of seven large-scale sculptural garments which will hang from the gallery ceiling. As part of the exhibition, the Wellin will debut a new film commissioned from Gibson by the museum.
The exhibition will also include a suite of ceramic assemblages, panels, tapestries, and paintings, all created in 2017-2018. Also on view will be LIKE A HAMMER, Gibson’s multi-media installation commissioned for the 2016 Site Santa Fe Biennial. Earlier pieces such as robes, bags, and a sculptural figure from 2014-2016, and a series of smaller ceramic forms inspired by historic Mississippian head pots from 2015-2016, will be featured in the exhibition.
A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and half Cherokee, Gibson grew up in major urban centers in the United States, Germany, Korea, and England. This unique combination of influences play a central role throughout Gibson’s work, which largely focuses on themes of identity, cultural perceptions, and the artist’s own personal history.
His work has been featured in solo museum exhibitions at the National Academy of Art in New York City (2013), the Bronx Museum of Art (2014), the Savannah College of Art and Design (2016), and the Oklahoma Contemporary in Oklahoma City (2017), and his first major museum retrospective was presented by the Denver Museum of Art this year.
The exhibition will travel to the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin in 2019.
The Wellin Museum of Art hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Parking and admission are free of charge. For further information, please contact the Wellin Museum of Art at 315-859-4396 or visit the website.
