2023 New Editions: Jeffrey Gibson

Jeffrey Gibson, MIRROR IN THE SKY, 2023. Click to view.

Jeffrey Gibson, PLAY AMONG THE STARS, 2023. Click to view.
Jeffrey Gibson’s impressive multi-disciplinary practice combines American, Indigenous, and Queer histories with references to music and literature subcultures, artistic traditions, and personal experiences. His work presents powerful statements about individual and collective identities and the forces that shape their perception throughout time. A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, Gibson grew up in Germany, South Korea, and England. In each of these multicultural environments, he found friendships and connections in the music scenes of those countries. These myriad influences fuel the type of resistance he creates through his work. Characterized by abundant color and complex geometric patterns, Gibson’s work invites deep reflection on identity and discusses histories through a lens that advocates for a future with widened access to democracy and freedom for all.
The Portland Art Museum and SITE Sante Fe, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, selected Jeffrey Gibson to represent the United States at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2024.
Established in 1895, La Biennale di Venezia is acknowledged today as one of the most prestigious cultural institutions, and its International Art Exhibition introduces hundreds of thousands of visitors to exciting new art every two years. The United States Pavilion opened at the Giardini della Biennale in 1930. Following in line with his celebrated career, Jeffrey Gibson is the first Indigenous artist selected to represent the United States with a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale. On view April 20 through November 24, 2024, Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me provides international audiences the first major opportunity to experience Gibson’s work outside of the United States.
For the U.S. Pavilion, Gibson activated both the interior and exterior of the building with a series of new and recent paintings, sculptures, and video that invite reflection on individual and collective identities. The work deconstructs the ways in which notions of taste, authenticity, and persistent stereotypes of Indigenous people are used to delegitimize cultural expressions that exist outside the mainstream.
We completed two new printed editions with Jeffrey Gibson in 2023 that closely relate to many of the paintings featured in Gibson’s presentation in Venice. In these prints, titled MIRROR IN THE SKY and PLAY AMONG THE STARS, Gibson layered many patterns and colors to create rich, mesmerizing compositions. As the titles reference the sky and the stars, these pieces may depict portals or moments of wonder that could appear in the sky on a clear day. The expertly layered patterns, as shapes recede into the background as additional patterns are applied, recognize that our histories are always with us and foreground our current reality.
These new prints were built up through many layers of screen printed color and additional collage elements. MIRROR IN THE SKY includes thirty-two colors printed in thirty-eight runs (some colors were printed more than once), and PLAY AMONG THE STARS consists of an impressive forty-two colors printed in sixty-six runs! In MIRROR IN THE SKY, the overlapping circles emanating from the center were screen printed separately, cut out, and collaged on top of the rest of the printed composition. The collage elements in PLAY AMONG THE STARS are the arrowhead shapes in the center of the composition that do not fit within the linear or grid-based patterns that make up the rest of the image.
Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, Colorado) is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, painting, installation, video art, and performance. Gibson received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his MA from the Royal College of Art in London. He has also been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Claremont Graduate University and the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Gibson has received distinguished awards, including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2012) and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award (2019). Notable solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at the Brooklyn Art Museum, Times Square Arts, Blanton Museum of Art, Wellin Museum of Art, The New Museum, and Denver Art Museum. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Denver Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and others. Gibson also conceived and coedited the landmark volume An Indigenous Present (2023), which showcases diverse approaches to Indigenous concepts, forms, and media. He lives and works in Hudson, New York, and is an artist-in-residence at Bard College.