There is an interesting description, somewhat of an extended biography, of the artist on this page by Jan van der Marck.
Jef Bourgeau is the director of Detroit’s Museum of New Art.
"Jef Bourgeau was born in Detroit in 1950. At the age of thirteen, he began to illustrate and write short fiction. At nineteen, he was invited to create a ten-page layout of block prints for a Canadian art journal. Bourgeau sold his first novel the next year, but, unhappy with this freshman effort, pulled out of the contract and destroyed the manuscript. He spent the next ten years experimenting with his writing and painting, and soon was exploring film and video as well.
In 1980 he first encountered the early potential of computers and multi-media art. By 1986, as part of a show dedicated to Diego Rivera in celebration of his 50th anniversary of the Detroit Industry frescoes, Bourgeau presented three films and ten digital-based paintings at Meadow Brook Art Gallery’s Muscle and Machine Dream.
In 1990, Kiichi Usui, that same gallery’s director, offered Bourgeau a solo show (Boxes) of new work generated entirely from computers and video.
Having finally developed all these varied mediums into a satisfactory form of installation work, Bourgeau began his gallery career in 1991: first with Feigenson/Preston then next at O.K. Harris Works of Art. Within a few short years of that, his work had been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States, and from Europe through Asia."
http://jefbourgeau.com/pages/A_User's_Manual.htm
USER'S MANUAL
Jef Bourgeau has a User's Manual, used as "the ideal guide for anyone wishing to approach the art of Jef Bourgeau. It is a one-of-a-kind manual providing those crucial parts necessary to reassemble the artist’s life and work."
"Throughout his career Jef Bourgeau has fashioned his own identity as one might manipulate an artistic medium, helping to launch a fundamental model of post-20th century theory: not so much preoccupied with the issue of identity as suspending it.
In accordance, there is not one Jef Bourgeau but many. Not only has he adopted several post-modernist and more advanced idioms in quick succession, but he has also invented several contradictory alter egos. Bourgeau has presented himself as artist and art dealer, conceptualist and craftsman, pragmatist and dreamer, bully and recluse. He is the ultimate fabulist, challenging our assumptions about art.
Yet within all these shifting strategies Bourgeau has set up a powerful negative logic, aimed at questioning the nature of art and art institutions. And, most profoundly, the culture that builds and decides them.
So to that end this book would present his work as an on-going narrative, yet without a story. Or, at the least, without resolution. There is a tension in his work that is relentless; like all good art, never entirely allowing the viewer the comfort of seeing it complete." - Jan van der Marck
http://jefbourgeau.com/Jef_Bourgeau/Bourgeau_spread.pdf
QUOTES
"Maybe it’s just the passing of time, but I’m evaluating people who have touched my life over the years. I must say that Jef Bourgeau has made a dent in my thinking. I always somehow mistrust the word “genius” but I think if I were going to use it for an artist in this place and time, it would be for Bourgeau. I think his ideas and his philosophy need time to reach people, to seep through the armor that walls off our brains. I’ve been in turn annoyed, angry, dazzled, amused, nonplussed, outraged, intimidated, bewildered and a host of other emotions that his work calls up." - Joy Hakanson Colby
"In accordance, there is not one Jef Bourgeau but many. Not only has he adopted several post-modernist and more advanced idioms in quick succession, but he has also invented several contradictory alter egos. Bourgeau has presented himself as artist and art dealer, conceptualist and craftsman, pragmatist and dreamer, bully and recluse. He is the ultimate fabulist, challenging our assumptions about art." - Jan van der Marck
"In accordance, there is not one Jef Bourgeau but many. Not only has he adopted several post-modernist and more advanced idioms in quick succession, but he has also invented several contradictory alter egos. Bourgeau has presented himself as artist and art dealer, conceptualist and craftsman, pragmatist and dreamer, bully and recluse. He is the ultimate fabulist, challenging our assumptions about art." - Jan van der Marck
Interview with Jan van der Marck discussing the work and art of Jef Bourgeau.
Connecting Hirst’s Dots
1996-2008
Figurative
Abstract 5
Exhibition View
Oakland University Art Gallery
1992
Renovations
Includes 70 major works in painting, photography, installation and film
Jef Bourgeau interests me because he has the ability to reach outside of his own mind and create others. He remakes, interprets, questions, highlights, etc, aspects of the art world. He even has his own museum so that he can show what he wants to show, and curates it as well. In relation to my practice, I admire his ability to be more than simply himself, and wish to continue with that idea in my work. Sometimes you and your life and ideas are simply not good enough to fulfill the whole human experience, maybe because its boring, or awful, and creating other beings to fill those gaps is an interesting concept.
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