The Aldrich Thanks GE for Generous Donation
August 21, 2006The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum would like to thank GE Sealants & Adhesives for donating 1,200, 10.1 fl. oz. tubes of clear GE Silicone II for new works by Jeffery Gibson, an artist from the group exhibition No Reservations: Native American Culture and History in Contemporary Art. No Reservations will be on view at the Museum August 23, 2006, through February 25, 2007. Mr. Gibson will also be showing another piece utilizing the silicone donation in Off-the-Map: Landscape in the Native Imagination on view at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center in New York City from March through September 2007.
The cultural influences on artist Jeffrey Gibson are diverse. Of Choctaw and Cherokee ancestry, he spent much of his childhood overseas, including periods in Germany and Korea. He has received wide recognition over the past several years for his fantastically-detailed organic abstraction, which features his signature technique of combining oil painting with "beaded" sculptural application of pigmented silicone.
Gibson is proposing to create large, sculptural reliefs that will be primarily covered with colored silicone for both The Aldrich and NMAI exhibitions. These new works will be extremely ambitious, requiring the artist to lease new studio space in addition to taking on large material expenses. Both The Aldrich and the NMAI are working to significantly support Gibson's new projects. Thanks to GE's generous donation, Gibson is able to completely realize his complex new works. "Working with Silicone II has resolved many issues in completing earlier paintings and installations," writes Gibson. "It is an incredibly flexible medium, literally and conceptually, that has allowed me to continue working as a painter in three dimensions as opposed to two."
Curated by Aldrich exhibitions director Richard Klein and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, and LEF Foundation, the large-scale No Reservations group exhibition looks at artists whose work deals with both the deep cultural legacies and complex histories of Native peoples in the United States. The project challenges preconceived ideas of what form Native-influenced work can take.
About GE Sealants & Adhesives
GE Sealants & Adhesives (GESA) is a division of GE Advanced Materials, a world leader in providing materials solutions through engineering thermoplastics, silicon-based products and technology platforms, and fused quartz and ceramics. GESA offers a variety of silicone and acrylic sealants, providing builders and homeowners with solutions for sealing the home envelope.
