JILLIAN MAYER: PRECIPICE / POSTMODEM at Locust Projects

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Conversation with Jillian Mayer: 7pm



Exhibitions on view through June 19, 2013

Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-5pm

JILLIAN MAYER:
PRECIPICE / POSTMODEM

Now celebrating its 15th year of exhibiting experimental contemporary art, Locust Projects is pleased to present Precipice/PostModem by Miami-based artist Jillian Mayer. Mayer is known for eclectic video installations that compress virtual, cinematic, and physical space. This will be Mayer’s largest exhibition to date, passing fluidly from cinema to installation in both the physical and digital realm while incorporating interactive and technological elements to create a nonlinear meta-narrative.

The exhibition will feature sculptural and installation work satirically exploring the concept of a technological singularity, the theoretical moment in time when the boundary between human and machine no longer exists. Mayer uses comedy as a means to inspire introspection about technology’s place as a surrogate for spirituality in our lives, and implies that it is quickly becoming much more, regardless of whether or not the predictions of futurists like Ray Kurzweil come to fruition. The various pieces of her show explore the ramifications of this impending change, from angles that range from sociological to parodic to sublime.

Works include A Place for Online Dreaming, an installation with performance, linked to an interactive website at Aplaceforonlinedreaming.com as well as Swing Space, another video installation featuring several performers on swings above the gallery floor, transfixed by a projected digital reality; and For U, a sculpture that exists in augmented reality and can only be fully seen through a custom smartphone app. Other works will include self-aware paintings, faux infomercials, and poorly articulated androids constructed of digital tablets and Roomba vacuum cleaners.

Precipice/PostModem builds on a body of work that began with the experimental short film #PostModem which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013 and was later featured in an independent film retrospective at MoMA in New York as part of the Carte Blanche series.

ABOUT JILLIAN MAYER
Jillian Mayer is a Cuban-American artist living in Miami.    In 2010, her video Scenic Jogging was one of the 25 selections for the Guggenheim’s Youtube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video and was exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain; and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany.  Recent solo projects include Family Matters at David Castillo Gallery, Miami (2011), Love Trips at World Class Boxing, Miami (2011), and Erasey Page at the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (2012). Mayer is currently at work on an artist book to be released by [name] Publications. Her video works have been premiered at galleries and museums internationally and film festivals such as SXSW and Sundance. She was recently featured in Art Papers and in ArtNews discussing identity, Internet and her artistic practices and influences.  Mayer is a recent recipient of the prestigious South Florida Cultural Consortium's Visual/Media Artists Fellowship 2011, Cintas Foundation Fellowship 2012, and was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine. She has been awarded the Elsewhere Residency as a NEA Southern Constellation Fellow and the Zentrum Paul Klee Fellowship in Bern, Switzerland for 2013. In 2014, Mayer will have a solo show at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts as part of the Salt Series. Mayer is represented by David Castillo Gallery, Miami, FL.