Aspen Art Museum

Double Fortune

2022

Printed cotton canvas, lyrca fabric, cotton thread, nylon thread, holographic vinyl fabric, acrylic felt, sculpting wire, acrylic druzy beads

64 x 55 x 10 in (162.6 x 139.7 x 25.4 cm)

Kindly donated by the artist and Kavi Gupta Gallery.

Estimate: $100,000–$150,000

Working with painting, sculpture, garments, performance, and film, Jeffrey Gibson explores questions of personal identity, culture, history, and society. As a member of the Choctaw and Cherokee nations, Gibson is interested in celebrating and preserving the craft traditions of Native American peoples. Fascinated by the labor, skill, and history invested in textiles, tapestry, weaving, and beadwork, and seduced by the extravagant use of detail in these practices, he borrows from these traditions for his own work. In an interview at the time of the Whitney Biennial, 2019, he remarked: “I want long term evidence that native people exist, are present, and contribute.”

Double Fortune, 2022 belongs to Gibson’s long-running series of ceremonial garments, which explore the transformational powers of costume. This magnificent gown combines textiles in a heady mixture of styles, all in Gibson’s preferred electric colors. Traditional patterns fuse with Op art-inspired fabrics and computer-generated prints; the front of the gown is embellished with two giant flowers, their centers twinkling with embedded gems. Bringing together this breadth of styles and influences, Gibson offers a non-hierarchical and celebratory spin on cultural appropriation.

Born in 1972 in Colorado, Gibson lives and works in Hudson, New York. He has exhibited widely throughout the United States. In 2019 he was a MacArthur Genius Grant winner and was awarded an honorary doctorate. His work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA.

Artist Bio

Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972, USA) combines Native American traditions with the visual languages of Modernism to explore the contemporary confluence of personal identity, culture, history, and international social narratives. Gibson is a member of the Chocktaw and Cherokee nations. He currently lives and works in Hudson, New York.

Growing up, Gibson traveled extensively with his family, living for long periods of time in Germany, Korea, and the United States. While moving from place to place, he found solace and friendship in the music scene, at various times exploring the sounds and social traditions of the punk and rave music of his generation, and the PowWow traditions of his native heritage. These influences helped him to contextualize the power of costumes as objects that can transform the wearer, and helped him understand the contemporary desire to be able to take agency over our own identities.

Gibson’s multicultural perspective also informed his study of art history and helped him to develop his personal style. That style has manifested across several dynamic and diverse bodies of work, in which traditional native materials like animal hides, beads, and tipi poles intermingle with modern mediums like spray paint, acrylics, ceramic, and tape. One of his most recognized series involves punching bags that Gibson deftly transforms into aesthetic totems.

Another of Gibson’s long-running series involves an examination of ceremonial garments. Several of these works were exhibited in a special installation at the entrance to the 2018 New York Armory Show, as well as at the entrance to the 2019 Whitney Biennial. The garments express a range of perspectives, and influences and seem to anticipate inhabitation, like symbols of history and culture that possess both personal and wider social meaning.

Gibson’s work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Eiteljorg Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, among others.

To register a bid or to request a condition report, please contact bid@aspenartmuseum.org.

Read the interview between Jeffrey Gibson and Aspen Art Museum curator Simone Krug on page 44 of our Summer Magazine.