JEFF GILLETTE - WORST CASE SCENARIO


Contact:  Gary Pressman, Gallery Director
Ph: 310/829-2156 
E-Mail: CoproGallery@Live.com
Web: www.CoproGallery.com

WHAT: JEFF GILLETTE - WORST CASE SCENARIO

WHEN: Exhibit runs; June 9 – July 7, 2018
Opening Reception: Saturday June 9, 2018 - 8:00 – 11:30 p.m.

WHERE: 2525 Michigan Ave. T5, Santa Monica, CA 90404 / 310-829-2156

Mickey H-Bomb, 39" x39" acrylic on canvas

Copro Gallery presents Jeff Gillette's fifth solo show with the gallery, "Worst Case Scenario ". This brand new body of work combined with some older works and several sculptures is inspired by where the world is heading 50 years later out of the 60's from the days Jeff grew up, to his life in the Peace Corps as a volunteer in Nepal in the 80's to today, 2018 'Worst Case Scenario'. The planet is going to Hell in a Handbasket with a population explosion heading to critical mass and pollution of the land, air and sea making life for every living creature a peril. Mounting military strife is leading us to an appointment with Dr. Strangelove "So If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing...... Let's break out the booze and have a ball" (in the words of songwriter Peggy Lee).

Inspired by his many vacations to India In a continuing series of what he calls “Slumscape” paintings, Jeff depicts his experiences in the environments of many of the shanty town areas where it's hard discerning the trash from the architecture. Most of Jeff's paintings feature Disney characters either prominently, hidden or dead in the piles of debris. Also Included in the show are a multitude of sculptures that mimic the detritus that is the material used by the slum inhabitants to create their impromptu homes. In one painting he portrays the litter-strewn mud banks of the horribly polluted shoreline of Mumbai India in a whole new light. " I have a particular recollection of an early morning stroll near the Mumbai bay. After rounding a corner of a row of shanties, I saw about a dozen slum-dwellers crouched, pissing on the shoreline" This exhibition will give you a glimpse into some of the most Wretched Places on Earth!

Jeff Gillette VS. Banksy

In the spring of 2015, Jeff received a message via Facebook from the manager for Banksy, the omnipresent yet invisible English street artist known for exploring war, political corruption, hope and revolution. Banksy, through his manager, asked Gillette to provide him with six large "Dismayland" paintings for an exhibition he was mounting in England, which also included works by British art provocateur Damien Hirst. Gillette worked laboriously on the requested pieces, sent them off to the UK in the early summer, and all of them sold very quickly. Soon after, he received an invitation to visit and help install a large, secretive installation that Banksy was setting up in Weston-super-Mare, UK three hours from London. After Gillette's two plus decades of laboring over his slum dwellings juxtaposed with Disney characters he witnessed Banksy's life-size "Dismaland" bemusement park -- which featured rides and displays, evocative of Gillette's own "Dismayland." The "Dismaland" Castle, particularly, appeared derivative of Gillette's castles but Jeff quickly adds that he and Banksy share similar sensibilities. However, a commentator on the UK's Channel 4 International remarked on August 21, 2015 -- at the bemusement park's opening -- that "Dismaland was in part inspired by the work of Jeff Gillette, who's been subverting Disney for years."



Jeff Gillette Press:
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