April 2011
Saatchi Magazine - interview with James Gilbert about recent work
READ SAATCHI MAGAZINE INTERVIEW
March 2011
Sculpture Magazine Vol. 30 No.2 - Recent review of Warnings & Instructions
READ SCULPTURE MAGAZINE REVIEW
January 27 - March 25, 2011
Lenzner Gallery, Pitzer Art Galleries
Worker is a performance-based installation that includes sculptural elements, video and audio. A group of anthropomorphic life-size soft sculptures are positioned within an undulating organic and visceral environment, created by a mass of used thrift-store and abandoned clothing stacked and layered from floor to ceiling. A cacophonous hum of buzzing bees and chirping birds layered against the clattering of sewing machines, city traffic, sirens, dogs barking make up the soundtrack of dissonant and competing sounds. Both organic and industrial, the soundscape creates an enveloping and all-consuming experience providing a charged and meditative space. Worker pays homage to those who work in a textile factories while simultaneously acknowledging Los Angeles garment workers and their collective action to change sweatshop conditions in Los Angeles factories. Worker draws attention to the alienation of contemporary laborers, their invisibility within the process of mass production and the precarious nature of their employment made infinitely worse by the economic downturn. On opening night, an anthropomorphic sculpture will be created by the artists and local participants dressed in repurposed clothes, and material used in the installation symbolically representing the efforts of unseen laborers
LISTEN TO NPR INTERVIEW
READ ARTILLERY MAGAZINE REVIEW
READ EXHIBITION ESSAY
November 10 - 27, 2010
#TheSocialGraph
Outpost, Brooklyn, NY
#TheSocialGraph is an evolving exploration of the burgeoning field of social media art and the relation of contemporary art with this populist tool as a medium, facilitator, and subject for art.During the course of #TheSocialGraph there will be published podcasts of interviews, discussions with each of the participant and including a retrospective of YouTube from an art world perspective, a listening party, a dance performance influenced by avatars, an online participation work/performance with a night of screenings of and discussions. Including a new work by James Gilbert, "Privacy is Dead Because We Said So, 2.0"
WATCH INTERVIEW
JAMES GILBERT ON TWEETED, GOOGLED AND INAPPROPRIATELY TOUCHED
September 2, 2010
Privacy is Dead Because We Said So
Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum
Gilbert will set up a temporary sewing shop producing several hundred real size pairs of plastic, transparent underwear, which will amass to form huge sculptural piles around him. The sculptures become more present throughout the performance. He invites the viewer to play a critical role in a miniature mass production exercise. Perched atop a platform in CAF's front entrance, he methodically produces and reproduces various versions of his see-through plastic underwear, allowing them to accumulate in a pile beneath his feet and encouraging viewers to hang the underpants in the gallery's breezeway on clothe lines transforming the private to public.
July 17 - September 12, 2010
Unrealised Potential
Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester, UK
Unrealised Potential is a collaborative group exhibition instigated by artist/curator Mike Chavez-Dawson. The show aims to explore the creative potential of artists’ unrealised projects, blurring the lines between artist, curator, visitor and producer. he show also includes a number of invited contributions from over seventy other artistsncluding Richard Wilson, Tom Morton, Cecilia Wee, David Shrigley, Simon Patterson, and many more.
Artforum review of Warnings & Instructions at Dallas Contemporary, Artforum, Summer 2010. XLVIII, No. 10
May 21 - June 19, 2010
Platform4, Aalborg, Denmark
A collection of thirteen recent videos. The short narratives explore identity, safety and security while addressing our need to install endless safety precautions, legislation and instill overprotective behavior in our lives that practically remove the need for common sense and sense of humor.
February 21, 2010
Artist Led Tour - Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Andy Warhol: the Last Decade
Accomplished artists offer unique thoughts on the artist, his work and his contributions as they put this special exhibition into context based on their own particular perspectives as artists.
February 13 - April 24, 2010
Transitive Pairings: Body Object
CentralTrak, University of Texas, Dallas
Transitive Pairings: Body Object brings together three teams of makers, each constituted by a well-established local architect and an artist who works in the fields of sculpture, fashion, and installation art. The exhibition mines the formal overlap between architecture and fashion while promoting hybrid forms that blur the boundaries between the two. At once conceptual and performative, the work in Transitive Pairings: Body Object creates an immersive environment that engages it viewers through several sensoria. By pushing the notion of functionalism in the realms of fashion and architecture,Transitive Pairings: Body Object asks that we, the audience, rethink the skin organ as not just the covering of the body, but also the sensory barrier between our bodies and exterior experiences of the world.
February 6 - May 15, 2010
Warnings & Instructions
Dallas Contemporary, Dallas
A large-scale, site-specific solo installation - a pink airplane fuselage in three parts
overpowering nearby teetering life boats in an unsettling analysis of travel safety and security. The multi-media sculpture, audio, and video is response to today’s endless safety precautions and legislation in our lives that practically remove the need for common sense and sense of humor.
READ EXHIBITION ESSAY
WATCH INTERVIEW
WATCH DOCUMENTARY
December 16, 2009
Artist Talk - Dallas Contemporary
August 2009
The Kinsey Institute acquires work for permanent collection
August 15 – September 19, 2009
Group Show – Our History
Light & Sie Dallas
August 3 – 9, 2009
London art writer Ben Street selected James Gilbert’s work for his favorite top ten list – listed on Saatchi online gallery
June – December 2009
Artist in Residence, CentralTrak, University of Texas, Dallas
May 10 – June 20, 2009
Tigersprung: Obscure Couture in the Now-Time
The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas
Fashion plays with time, pushing history to non-linear limits with its borrowings from the past in the present to create an ensemble of the future. This exhibition collectively mines the potential perversities of fashion in order to make you rethink the ground beneath your feet and the screen before your eyes.
April 11 – May 9, 2009
We Are Here
PYO Gallery, Los Angeles
A multi-media exhibition that includes sculptures, paintings and drawings that explore the relationship and contextualization of person and environment; the existence of one without the other while addressing the psychological alienation of the unseen. Nine artists from China, Korea and the United States utilize minimization of information while cultivating a sense of symbolism for contemporary culture and politics and collectively question existence in this new era of uncertainty and hope. We Are Here offers narrative discovery within limited context and allows viewers to interpret the uncertainty of the unseen.
January 8 –31, 2009
What’s the Matter With Mommy – The Hangover?
Phantom Galleries, Los Angeles
A multimedia appreciation of unconventional feminine role models, curated by Shana Nys Dambrot and featuring photography, painting, installation, sculpture, video, performance, and spoken word.
November 24 – December 20, 2008
The Privacy of Underpants – Part II
PYO Gallery, Beijing, China
The exhibition will include “soft sculptures,” continuous line drawings and abstract paintings addressing the relationships between the loss of anonymity, identity, loneliness and the
environment.
December 2-7, 2008
Scope, Miami
Light and Sie
October 9 - October 21, 2008
The Privacy of Underpants
PYO Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
The exhibition will feature eighty works including "soft sculptures," continuous line drawings, a site-specific wall drawing and abstract painting addressing the relationships between the loss of anonymity, identity, loneliness and the environment.
June 12 – July 19, 2008
I Know Everything About You, And We Haven’t Met
Light & Sie, Dallas
Working primarily in drawings and “soft sculptures,” this exhibition features work interested in exploring the relationship between anonymity, identity and loneliness within a media saturated environment. A suite of black and white line drawings that are created in one sitting, with one continuous uninterrupted line that fills the page with environments, objects and face-less people but really underscore one’s individual alone-ness in the world. Also a site-specific wall drawing in the Gallery based upon these themes. In addition, an installation of “soft sculptures.” Rendered from industrial grade plastic, in a translucent white, these sculptures are representative of “transparent” people – meticulously cut garments that could be haute couture, but more accurately serve to suggest the wearer and their possible identity or lack thereof.
May 3 - June 14, 2008
(Don’t) Want to be Anonymous
Couturier Gallery, Los Angeles
The exhibition will include abstract paintings addressing the relationships between the loss of anonymity, the desire to privatize identity, loneliness and the environment. The search for anonymity in this bizarre, almost fantastic world of virtual reality, where one’s identity,
occupation, and gender can be found easily on the internet.