The multidisciplinary artist Jeffrey Gibson has had a packed exhibition schedule the last several years: at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Broad, and most notably the United States pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. He’s ticked off just about every major museum in this country and is working his way down a global list. Now, his work is presented in the intimate setting of the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery, letting viewers get encapsulated in a microcosm of the past decade of his work.
Gibson’s Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee heritage serve as a font of inspiration, as do the many places he’s lived and traveled to around the world, including a stint living in the Maryland suburbs as a teenager. In honor of the exhibit’s D.C. setting, the title A Real Love Thing nods to hometown hero Marvin Gaye, who, when promoting his seminal album What’s Going On, described the music’s thesis as such: “I think I’ve got a real love thing going. I love people, I love life, and I love nature, and I can’t see why other people can’t be like that.” Gibson seems to share this attitude of love and elan, which practically brims over from the small collection of works shared.
Entering the gallery space feels a bit like being dropped inside a kaleidoscope, and not just because of the abundance of colors, beads, and shiny objects. Gibson is a multi-hyphenate, an artist who not only works across media but in different niches of master craftsmanship. A Real Love Thing has paintings, photographs, sculptures, silkscreen prints, and textile art on display. The artist is never operating in just one mode, materially or thematically, and he invites the viewer to jump into these multiple viewpoints.
Music is a through line that pulses through the exhibit, and several works draw their titles with songs or albums. A triumphant garment with voluminous chiffon sleeves and festooned with beadwork, floral sequins, and iridescent cones shares its title with the Dionne Warwick track “Don’t Make Me Over,” and if you look closely, you can see that phrase faintly printed on parts of the fabric. “Round Dancing” applies patterns that almost jump and vibrate to the hide surface of a drum. An accompanying playlist has been created for the exhibit, and it draws on the literal references from the work, as well as a jubilant mix of songs that align in spirit, like disco and dance tracks, Cree drumming, hip-hop, and Tracy Chapman.
“Dewdrops in the Garden,” named in honor of the Deee-Lite album, is one of Gibson’s most recent works on display. It’s big enough to feel like you could fall inside. A beadwork border frames a mandala-like configuration of two circles overlapped with other geometric shapes, each layer of intersection treated with a different opacity or glaze that produces a paint store’s worth of different hues. It’s a visual cacophony that captures an exuberance not unlike that of a night of dancing to club music.
Language itself is distorted and echoed like a house music track in multiple pieces. “Keep on Moving” resembles a transfigured American flag, with a quilted and beaded white rectangle. Strips of fabric are emblazoned with historic images or words, which are arranged in magnetic poetry-esque configurations. They can be read left to right, vertically, or stacked, to form evocative declarations like “SHE DRUMS IN DEEP SPACE” and “THEY DEFINE THEIR OWN BODY.” A wall of silkscreen prints uses geometric forms to comprise letters themselves, abstracting them and turning them into patterns and compositions first, and song lyrics second.
It is this quality of abstraction and refracting recognizable symbols until they shatter that makes Gibson’s work so vibrant and full of possibility. Much of Gibson’s art is political or suggestive of multiculturalism and melting pots, but it’s never obvious or trite. Rather, the influence of queer culture, globalism, and Indigenous traditions feels expansive, jubilant, and open to interpretation.
A sense of genuine community-mindedness carries through the exhibit. Many artists work with assistants who help their visions become reality, but with Gibson’s pieces, his team of beadworkers, quilters, and textile experts are not just executing the final results but keeping Indigenous art techniques alive. Gibson frequently collaborates with other artists, and has produced a series of photos of Indigenous creators who live in New York City, two of which are hung here and paired with complementary geometric color field paintings.
Right down to the hanging and installation, the show envelops the viewer. The Frary Gallery shies away from the typical sterile white cube presentation, instead backdropping different segments of the wall with deep forest green, dusty lilac, and fire engine red that play with the candy-coated hues of Gibson’s catalog. Though there aren’t any in this exhibit, Gibson has worked with punching bags as a material and a canvas, and pound for pound, this showcase punches above the weight class that might be expected for only 14 works.
Jeffrey Gibson: A Real Love Thing is on view through March 13 at the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery. jhu.edu. Free.
