Jacob Feige.
Sep 12 – Oct 25, 2014
MOVEMENT are delighted to welcome back US based artist Jacob Feige. Presenting a new body of work Settlement. For this project Feige asked his students to conceive of their own utopian communes or societies and then chose ten to re-interpret through painting, the result being a series of incomplete visual narratives, each one part of a story of someone’s idea of a perfect society exploring a dream others’ dreams.
The ten triangular paintings are each 70 cm a side. Each begins with a straightforwardly representational painting, which is covered to various degrees with abstract pours, spheres, and blobs. The abstract imagery varies by piece. Geometric elements are tribute to utopian imagery of the twentieth century, especially the art produced at communes like Drop City and Libre in the western United States. Pours of paint, are distancing mechanisms, pushing narratives into the distance, like a dream that can’t quite be remembered. In several paintings there is little or no abstract elements, the narrative and imagery being ambiguous enough on their own. The abstraction in Spirits and After Settlement Occurs is like the residue of a living presence, just vanished.
The paintings are installed in a freestanding wooden armature inspired by geodesic structures similar to those found on communes in the American West in the 1960s and 70s. The verso of each painting, visible in the armature, features additional abstract pours of paint, a sort of dream ether that these utopian narratives arise from.
Accompanying the painting installation will be interviews with the students about their utopias, manipulated and reinterpreted by musician Keith Freund. The interviews relate directly to the content of the paintings.
All paintings oil, acrylic, and alkyd on canvas and wood panel, 2014.
Spheres (Allison’s Utopia)
After Settlement Occurs (Carly’s Utopia)
Huntsmen (Dan’s Utopia)
Spirits (Dominick’s Utopia)
Magnetic Glider (Ian’s Utopia)
Condemned (Lee’s Utopia)
Beach Hut (Maddie’s Utopia)
Trail Magic (Natalie’s Utopia)
Shaper (Scott’s Utopia)
Spear Fisherman (Tyler’s Utopia)
Jacob Feige’s work on the project was supported by a grant from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.
The project is dedicated to Carly Sansone.