Brian Jungen at New Museum of Art

Friday, 05 August 2005 13:03

NEW YORK, N.Y.- The New Museum of Contemporary Art will present the first comprehensive survey of the work of artist Brian Jungen in an exhibition of thirty-five sculptures, drawings and installations. The New Museum presentation of Brian Jungen is organized by Curator Trevor Smith . Brian Jungen (b. 1970) was raised in Fort St. John, a remote logging town in the interior of northern British Columbia, by Aboriginal and Swiss parents. In his early twenties, Jungen moved to Vancouver to study art, and has since exhibited worldwide. Jungen transforms familiar objects and materials associated with food, clothing, furniture and shelter into artworks of explicit social commentary that engage the viewer viscerally and explore the tensions between indigenous and global cultures today. Jungen is best known for his Prototypes for New Understanding (1998-2005), a series of masks in which deconstructed Nike Air Jordan sneakers are reassembled to resemble Northwest Coast Aboriginal artifacts. Jungen’s gesture of cutting up one of the most sought-after consumer items of the late 20th century is a dramatic one. By reassembling the pieces of sneaker into Aboriginal masks, Jungen comments on how indigenous culture is commercialized and consumed. Jungen also demonstrates how these objects have more in common than just their trade value. The classic color combination of black, red and white as seen in the Air Jordans is prevalent in many Northwest Coast native motifs. Jungen’s Prototypes question cultural authenticity and authority while simultaneously comparing the handmade and the mass-produced. The pervasive references to Michael Jordan in Jungen’s work make visible Jungen’s own obsession with the basketball superstar, and reminds the viewer how persuasive marketing techniques can contribute to the fetishization of goods for sale. Jungen brings the use of mass-produced items in his work to a much larger scale in three works on view at the New Museum: Shapeshifter (2000), Cetology (2002) and Vienna (2003). These monumental works run between 21 feet and 42 feet in length and are suspended in space, much as one might see a whale skeleton displayed in a natural history museum. Jungen’s skill in manipulating viewer expectations by adding elements of surprise to his work is no more evident than in these precise replications of skeletal forms, which on close inspection the viewer realizes are made from garden-variety plastic chairs. The use of such banal objects in a work demonstrating such precise craftsmanship is a direct commentary on the tensions that exist between the rarefied museum space and the retail world. That the chairs, and hence the skeletons, are derived from petro-chemical products also reminds the viewer of the unfortunate effects that cheap, mass-produced products often have on the environment, and the role that humans play in that relationship. Brian Jungen’s emphasis on craft and creation, his engagement with 20th century art history, and his exploration of the tensions between indigenous and global cultures in our contemporary world, have made him one of the most influential young artists working in Vancouver today.

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