Art review: Jeffrey Gibson: The Space in Which to Place Me

This show is "ultimately a celebration of resilience and empowerment that pays tribute to histories of resistance and looks optimistically forward."

(Image credit: Andrew Burke-Stevenson / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

A year ago, Jeffrey Gibson made a splash in Venice, said James Tarmy in Bloomberg. The city's Art Biennale is "not known for its crowds," because the event's many exhibitions are so spread out. But Gibson had been chosen to represent the U.S. in a solo show, making him the first Native American artist so honored, and the 52-year-old Colorado native transformed the U.S. pavilion into a major attraction, covering the "staid façade" with bright red panels and "vivid" geometric designs. Inside the pavilion, the show was "joyous, loud, and, unsurprisingly, a crowd-pleaser," and it has now been moved, nearly intact, to L.A. "Angelenos should consider themselves lucky that such a remarkable display has set up stateside," said Time Out. Gibson, who is gay, often incorporates into his work phrases from the past and present that speak to oppression. But this show is "ultimately a celebration of resilience and empowerment that pays tribute to histories of resistance and looks optimistically forward."

"Gibson is certainly an artist of joy," said Brian T. Allen in National Review. "His format is big, his colors bright and zesty, and his forms geometric and packed." His paintings and wall hangings generally feature hard-edged patterns that have been derived from Indigenous art and blown up to wall size and rendered in neon colors. In his sculptural work, he uses colored beads, "and lots of them," to adorn towering figures, human-scale busts, and one totem-like punching bag. The New York Times has called the work in this show "politically obvious and visually juvenile." The Financial Times dismissed it as "lackluster and one-dimensional." Certainly, it'd be stronger without the distraction of the incorporated word phrases, such as "If there is no struggle, there is no progress" (from an 1857 Frederick Douglass speech) or "We hold these truths to be self-evident" (from the Declaration of Independence). His bead sculptures have "a pagan intensity" that transcends language. Even those, however, come across as deft decorative works "without much depth."

Experiencing the work in person, however, "stimulates the senses and inspires the mind," said David Pagel in the Los Angeles Times. "His exuberant, color-saturated installation serves up an abundance of beauty, awe, astonishment, and fun." Visitors can't help but discover something that delights them, whether it's an array of "lavishly patterned" flags, an evocative phrase from a Roberta Flack song, a giant bird "festooned with thousands of glistening beads," or a trio of 40-foot-long murals that create an almost intergalactic backdrop for milling fellow viewers. No one with an open heart could enter this exhibition and not feel embraced and accepted. "Gibson's art is all about making a place in the world where fear—the feeling of being overwhelmed by the speed and volume of modern life, the seemingly intractable political divide, the malignant racism that plagues the nation—has no toehold, much less a leg to stand on."