on view at
Whitney Artworks, Portland, ME
August 30 - October 7, 2006
IMAGES
PRESS
RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
I Got A Right: Jeff Badger at Whitney Artworks
PORTLAND, ME, August 23, 2006
“Anytime I want I got a right to move, no matter what they say”
-Iggy Pop, I
Got A Right
I Got A Right is about movement:
the mutability of identity in a painting and the ephemeral image on a
security monitor.
The paintings
in I Got A Right feature
reoccurring characters – a monocle-wearing robber baron, a disembodied
Brain, an armless Robin Hood – who act out miniature dramas of human
struggle in a tense and bizarre world.
Also included
in the show are surveillance sculptures, including Surveillance
Sandwiches, mechanical foam sandwiches topped with toothpicks and
olives in which motion-trigged spy cameras are hidden, and the Mobile
Surveillance House Plant (M.S.H.P.), a remote-control potted plant that
can be driven around the gallery as it captures images with a wireless
camera.
The images are displayed at a monitoring station where visitors can log
suspicious activity in the gallery. These works are an exploration of
security technology. By installing a camera in something as absurd as a
fake sandwich I hope to call attention to the spore-like proliferation
of cameras throughout the public squares and darkened corners of our
cities.
As a body of
work, I Got A Right is a
humorous look at the transience of identity. These works can be seen as
cautionary allegories about the cartoonish ambivalence with which roles
-- good and evil, rich and poor, watcher and watched -- are assigned in
contemporary culture.
SEE IMAGES
---------------
I Got A Right is Jeff Badger's
seventh solo exhibition and his first one-person show at Whitney Art
Works. His work has recently been included in group shows at MPG
Contemporary, Samson Projects and MassArt in Boston, and at the Center
for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, Maine. He holds degress from
Skidmore College (BS 1998) and the Art Institute of Boston (MFA 2005).
Badger lives and works in South Portland, Maine. Visit jeffbadger.com
for more information.
"I Got A Right" is
funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts
Commission,
an independent state agency supported by the National
Endowment for the Arts.
#####
©2006
JEFF BADGER
