JEF BOURGEAU P H O T O G R A P H Y
mr. Peeps
Takes a vacation
SPAIN
GERMANY
FRANCE
ITALY
The Rape of Sabine (after Giambologna)
MR PEEPS
Mr. Peeps
is an illegal immigrant who has been living in the USA since the age of 12. Self-taught, Mr. Peeps did not become an artist until later in his life. As the manager of several parking lot flea markets, Peeps has had easy access to an encyclopedia of characters and models that now inform his work. Still, it was only after his name made the national registry of sex offenders that he achieved some prominence as an artist. His career was officially launched while serving a three month jail term for having kissed his eight year old daughter on the mouth at a municipal swimming pool in West Melvindale. The county psychologist and, later, his parole officer encouraged Peeps to transfer this "paternal" passion into his art. His first such success was a tricycle sculpture aptly titled “Push me, Daddy” and was quickly purchased by the jail librarian. Peeps has since had several solo exhibitions in Thailand, Amsterdam, and his home country.
CURATOR
JEF BOURGEAU
is a Detroit photographer, painter and conceptual artist who has become notorious through his video sculptures, photography and curatorial work. The most famous and provocative of Bourgeau's work plays on the relationship between iconic imagery and irreverent materials, together forming a new context often drawing upon current controversies and, perhaps, the willfully provocative. Bourgeau has been a vexing figure for many in the art world 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 in a period when the epoch-making achievements of modern art are already matters of recorded fact. To this end, Bourgeau seems engaged with the vicissitudes of the constructed image, that is, the images 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 culled not only from the art world, but from such diverse sources as mass market catalogues, advertisements, cinema, and the Internet. 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 MarckAs well as an artist of note, Jef Bourgeau is the founding director of the Museum of New Art (MONA), of Detroit's artCORE project (empty storefronts to galleries), and co-founder of the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography.
CONTACT
www.jefbourgeau.com
SPAIN
GERMANY
FRANCE
ITALY
MR PEEPS
CURATOR
CONTACT
