A Lost Review

LOOKING OUTSIDE-IN: The Art of Jef Bourgeau
By ROGER GREEN
Booth Arts Writer

The challenge to “Think outside the box” might seem definitively 2007. But the strategy has a long, influential history, not least as regards the development of modern art. The intent has always been to question orthodoxies, to stimulate new ways of thinking and ultimately to foster meaningful social change.

That tradition continues in the work of Detroit artist Jef Bourgeau, who for nearly 40 years has thought creatively outside the box, assimilating sophisticated critical theory while utilizing new technology to achieve penetrating, expressive aims. Through Oct. 7, the Oakland University Art Gallery is showing a retrospective of Bourgeau’s inventive art. The exhibit was curated by Jan van der Marck, former chief curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Items on view, dating from 1968 to the present, are paintings, prints. photographs, assemblages, videos and materials documenting conceptual projects. The thread linking them and guiding Bourgeau’s development is pinpointed in van der Marck’s illuminating catalog essay. Simulation, the fundamental link, has been identified by cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard as endemic to the present “hyperreal” age, in which simulated copies have superseded original objects. Bourgeau has taken up and run with the notion of simulation, exercising it in slippery critiques of society, in particular of the art world and its politics.

Viewers will note that, despite Bourgeau’s satiric, even subversive aims, his craftsmanship is always superb. Working in a variety of media, he’s created and is showing a body of remarkably polished two- and three-dimensional objects.

One assemblage, “American Beauty (Sleeping)” comprises a playpen holding the bust of a child mannequin and a carpenter’s hammer. The piece is a comment about imminent violence against children -- think Columbine -- intensified by crisp construction from spare, unsullied parts. In a series of mixed-media pieces Bourgeau distills the essence of well-known artists into memorable, marketable, black-and-white logos (Magritte is a pipe, Matisse a pair of scissors). Here again, the workmanship is meticulous.

It’s just this technical perfection that makes Bourgeau’s conceptual projects -- gutsy exercises in simulation -- believable. His exhibit “Picasso’s Camera” purported to reveal the unrecognized genesis of Cubism: a camera with a cracked lens belonging to the artist. From what Bourgeau alleged was a roll of undeveloped film found in the camera, he created a series of fractured photo portraits, jestfully but convincingly redefining one of the wellsprings of modern art.

Most recently, Bourgeau has extended simulation into performance, assuming the identities of made-up, international artists and exhibiting their works with the aim of questioning curatorship, authenticity and the marketing of art. One of Bourgeau’s alter egos, Norwegian photographer Stig Eklund, creates moody pictures materializing northern angst and light.

In fact, Eklund’s and others’ pictures are creditable works of art in their own right. Continuing to make art under fake identities should be Bourgeau’s next career move, van der Marck said. The ability to do that testifies to Bourgeau’s endless invention, including self-invention, and to a talent that merits hearty applause.