Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, Colorado) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Hudson, New York who works across sculpture, painting, installation, video art, and performance. He is a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is half Cherokee. In his work, Gibson combines Native American traditions and materials with visuals influenced by Modernism to explore connections between personal identity, culture, and history and how these elements influence each other. He grew up in Germany, South Korea, and England, and in each of these multicultural environments, he found friendships and connections in the music scenes. Following this influence, song lyrics and costumes are important elements in his work, along with objects associated with Indigenous culture and ceremonies such as leather, beadwork, drums, and metal jingles.

Over the past decade, Jeffrey Gibson has built an impressive practice and become an anchor in Indigenous Futurism. Using recognizable Native American materials such as beads, fringe, and jingles in his sculptures and often substituting elk hide drums or stretched deer hide in place of canvas as a support for his paintings and prints, Gibson creates powerful statements that reorient the place and status of Native American art within contemporary culture. His colorful, graphic, and often text-inclusive works are laden with multiple layers of both blatant and subtle meaning mined from his personal experiences, in turn, also offering a unique representation of broader Indigenous and queer identities.

In these two new prints, MIRROR IN THE SKY and PLAY AMONG THE STARS, Gibson layers many patterns and colors to create rich mesmerizing compositions. As the titles reference the sky and the stars, one may begin to feel as if these pieces 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 our histories are always with us and foreground our current reality.

These new prints are built up through many layers of screen printed color and additional collage elements. In MIRROR IN THE SKY, the overlapping circles emanating out from the center were screen printed separately from the majority of the image, cut out, and collaged on. 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.

For more information or to make a purchase, please contact Tandem Press Curators J Myszka Lewis or Sona Pastel-Daneshgar at info@tandempress.wsic.edu or 608-263-3437.

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, Colorado) is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, painting, installation, video art, and performance. He is a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is half Cherokee. Gibson received his BFA from The Art Institute of Chicago and his MA from the Royal College of Art. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Claremont Graduate University in 2016. Gibson has received distinguished awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institution), TED Foundation, and the Jerome Hill Foundation. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 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 collections of the Smithsonian Institution, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Denver Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. In 2024, Gibson will represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. Jeffrey Gibson currently lives and works in Hudson, New York.

Jeffrey Gibson, PLAY AMONG THE STARS, 2023.
Screen print and collage on Arches 88 and Lanaquarelle. Edition of 30. 45 x 35 inches.
Click to view.

Jeffrey Gibson, MIRROR IN THE SKY, 2023.
Screen print and collage on Arches 88 and Lanaquarelle. Edition of 30. 45 x 35 inches.
Click to view.