Jeffrey Gibson

Drawing influence from popular music, fashion, literature, cultural and critical theory, and his own individual heritage, Gibson's work recontextualizes the familiar to offer a succinct commentary on cultural hybridity and the assimilation of modernist artistic strategies within contemporary art. Gibson's Cherokee and Choctaw lineage has imparted a recognizable aesthetic to his beaded works exploring narrative deconstructions of both image and language as transmitted through figuration. Known for his reappropriation of both found and commercial commodities—ranging from song lyrics to the literal objecthood of Everlast punching bags—repurposed again through Minimalist and post-Minimalist aesthetics, speaks to the revisionist history of Modernist forms and techniques.

Made possible by the William Bronson and Grayce Slovet Mitchell Lectureship

Image credit: Jeffrey Gibson, Alive [left], 2016, canvas, acrylic felt, artificial sinew, glass beads, steel studs, tin jingles, nylon fringe, steel, 100" x 61.25"; Birds of a Feather [right], 2017, glass beads, artificial sinew, wood, acrylic felt, druzy crystal, copper jingles, metal cones, nylon fringe, steel, 48" x 36" x 12". Courtesy of Jeffrey Gibson Studio. Photo: Peter Mauney.