For the ADAA Art Show 2020, Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present a new body of work by Jeffrey Gibson. The Art Show runs from February 27 through March 1 at the Park Avenue Armory. 

Gibson’s multimedia practice explores the intersections within his own identity as a gay, Native American artist. Integrating vivid geometric abstraction and text with materials such as glass beads and artificial sinew,  Gibson synthesizes the cultural and artistic traditions of his Cherokee and Choctaw heritage with themes from contemporary popular and queer culture. His new large-scale paintings alternate bands of painted and beaded patterns with boldly set phrases such as “POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT,” “LET THEM KNOW YOU’RE HERE,” and “STAND UP – SPEAK UP.” Gibson’s work is a vibrant call for queer and Indigenous empowerment, envisioning a celebration of strength and joy within these communities.  

Gibson’s work is currently the subject of the exhibition When Fire is Applied to Stone It Cracks, on view at the Brooklyn Museum through January 2021. This multimedia exhibition features objects selected by Gibson from the museum’s collection, presented alongside his recent work. Together, they raise questions about the historical representation of Native American art within cultural institutions, and provide a contemporary lens through which audiences can engage with these works in the present. 

Recent solo exhibitions also include Time Carriers at Esker Foundation, Calgary; The Anthropophagic Effect, New Museum, New York; THIS IS THE DAY at the Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY and Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX; and LIKE A HAMMER, at the Denver Museum of Art, CO, Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS, Seattle Museum of Art, WA, and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, WI. Gibson’s work was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial.

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, Colorado Springs, CO) grew up in major urban centers in the United States, Germany, Korea, and England. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 and Master of Arts in painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998. He is a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is half Cherokee. He is currently an artist-in-residence at Bard College and lives and works near Hudson, New York.

Gibson’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; Denver Art Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.; National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR; among others. Gibson is a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2019); the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Painters and Sculptors Award (2015); and the Creative Capital Foundation Grant (2005).