Jef Bourgeau
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Since he began exhibiting in the early 1990s, American
artist Jef Bourgeau has inspired provocation. His practice essentially
involves the remaking of art and artist, imagined and real. Bourgeau has
been a vexing figure for many and his "interventions" have continued to be
viewed as a subversion of traditional notions of artistic practice and
integrity.
Bourgeau’s art exemplifies the post-modern sense of
working, engaged with the vicissitudes of the constructed image, that is,
the image’s transposition from one medium and context to another and the
traces and consequences of this transfer. For Bourgeau, technology acts as a
filter to dissect and rebuild random or banal images.
By isolating and emptying out these disposable, commonplace representations, Bourgeau reinscribes them with a new essence, and in effect, completes them by converting such images into a charged narrative. As such, the mimicking of a second or third-generation "original" is tantamount to a kind of newfound legibility, resonance, and meaning. Art is used as a mediation filter, as a proposition about the act of perception itself.
What Bourgeau aims to dispel then are the Modernist myths of the original and of originality, and of straight-out artistic freedom against the commodity of art objects: all this, alongside the presumed power-sharing of gallery, collector, and museum over the artist and art trends. Bourgeau’s best known work, the Museum of New Art, has become a broad commentary on the fact that most people don’t actually see real paintings, as they are more likely to experience art as a decal reproduction on the side of a coffee mug. Asking isn’t that good enough, after all.
- Jan van der Marck