Jeffrey Gibson: ANCESTRAL SUPERBLOOM

Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present ANCESTRAL SUPERBLOOM, a solo exhibition of new work by Jeffrey Gibson on view from September 6 through October 21, 2023. 

ANCESTRAL SUPERBLOOM features a series of recent multimedia paintings, including large-scale painted elk hides, and a painted bronze sculpture edition. The title refers to the botanical phenomenon of the superbloom, during which a high volume of wildflowers blossom within an area at the same time. Gibson relates this explosive blooming to the vibrant saturation cultivated in his own work, and to the greater contemporary landscape of Indigenous artistic production and representation.

This body of work sees Gibson, who is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, further engaging ideas of cultural and queer identity, authenticity, and artistic referentiality. His practice explores a hybridity of visual languages and creative lineages, challenging mainstream representations of Native American art and underlying essentialist narratives. Traditional methods of patterning, textiles, and beadwork are synthesized with repurposed objects, bold abstraction, and popular literary and musical references, disrupting ideas of Indigenous cultures as singular and fixed in time or place. Addressing the struggles and triumphs of marginalized communities past and present, Gibson’s compositions reflects a vision of radical joy, queer affirmation, and collective perseverance.

The paintings on view in ANCESTRAL SUPERBLOOM evince the artist’s full impulse towards density: of color, pattern, and atmosphere. Rigorous build-ups of surface yields a solidity of presence and a dimensional emphasis on the relationship between fore and background. Gradated shapes overlap and intertwine freely with razor-edged rows of diamonds and checkered plots. Rather than defining negative space, the gaps between these elements become apertures to the underlying layers and alternate interactions of line and form. Clashing color combinations and a gestural series of drips, pours, and scrapes intentionally play with the boundaries of conventional taste and design, thriving in the space between garishness and grandeur.

The painted bronze edition is a composite figure, melding the anthropological imagination with consumer aesthetics. The head, borrowed from a Toby-style mug, bears the stereotypical portrait of a stoic chieftain, complete with a ceremonial headdress; this image is juxtaposed with the caricatured garb of the body, adapted from a mid-century Precious Moments “Native American-style” figurine. The design and function of the bronze sculpture address multiple material and economic histories, underscoring the thorny lineage of American decorative objects and the larger relationship between Native art production and non-Native consumption.