Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University
Sniff the Space Flat on Your Face
August 25-September 25, 2014
Jeffrey Vallance is a contemporary artist from Redondo Beach, California, born in 1955. He attended California State University Northridge, where he received his BA in Art in 1979, and then the Otis Art Institute for his MFA in 1981. He now lives and works in Los Angeles. His work is a melting pot of performance, installation, object-making, curation, and writing. Vallance is currently teaching a course titled "The Art of Infiltration" at Cal Arts. Infiltration art is denoted as "a branch of Intervention Art in which artists collaborate with institutions, communities, politicians, religions, museums and pop-culture figures outside of the traditional art world." Vallance's projects are highly conceptual and implicative in nature and can be analyzed to mean much more than meets the eye; because of its applicability to politics and human nature (among other disciplines), his work is intensely fascinating and captivating.
Two of Jeffrey Vallance's pieces are currently a part of Chapman University's Guggenheim Gallery exhibition, Sniff the Space Flat on Your Face. Celebrating irrational, surrealist art and dismissing rational models of art as ‘imposed by the limitations of man’s consciousness upon the unlimited variations of his internal and external world' (Stanley Krippner, ‘Die hypnotische Trance, die psychedelische Erfahrung und der kreative Akt’) the exhibition is appropriate for artists like Vallance. Jeffrey's pieces, along with the other pieces displayed, are definitely not limited by the status quo or common approaches to art or politics. The titles of his pieces are Blinky Bone in Greek Reliquary, and Cock Rooster, both from 2008.
Both pieces rest unassumingly in the gallery. Cock Rooster, the bust of a cloth rooster-shaped men's g-string is hung on a wooden plaque like a hunting trophy which sits on a small jutting wall near the entrance of the gallery; Blinky Bone in Greek Reliquary is an ornate metal and glass funerary votive inlaid with red velvet which holds the bone of a chicken leg sits on a white cubic pillar. The reliquary box is treated almost as an artifact, definitely of great importance. It is lit to reflect this, as well as given its own space on the pillar which sits in the gallery away from the wall. It feels independent and solitary from the other pieces in the gallery, giving it a sense of sacredness and seriousness. Then, once you look into the box and distinguish what is actually inside, your first reaction is a comic one. All of Vallance's work seems comic to begin with, but with further thought and reflection, it contains deep social and political commentary.
Here, what looks like the leftover bone from your El Pollo Loco 10 piece legs deal is set in a sacred Greek Orthodox funerary votive. Placed in a venue of respect and dignity, as a loved one or even a saint would be, the viewer is forced to reevaluate his or her perspective. Now, Blinky--an anonymous chicken Mr. Vallance bought at Ralph's supermarket and brought to a pet cemetery to be given a proper burial (as he explains on Late Night with David Letterman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15mGxWJpkDY)--is given value as a life that deserves respect just as a human's would. His humanization of an animal that we treat inhumanely and slaughter en masse each day for our own personal gain characterizes the modern Occidental way of life as hypocritical and heartless. Vallance's sociopolitical critique is not a joke. Blinky is very real, here for you to see. He may even make you think twice at the grocery store.This display of Vallance's art is ingenious. The pieces are unassuming and so still and solitary that they go unnoticed until pointed out or fallen upon. This gallery experience is the perfect analogy for Jeffrey Vallance's work: at first glance it can be pushed aside as "funny" or "bizarre." Upon further observation, however, one cannot escape its significance--a significance with implications that directly impact the viewer.
