JEFFERSON PINDER: THIN SKIN / SHOCK LAYER

January 18 – March 8, 2019
Artist Lecture: January 17, 7 pm, ACB 310
Opening Reception: January 18, 5-7 pm

This exhibition explores the convergence of sound and the body in the work of Jefferson Pinder. From human beings to automobiles, the artist utilizes the body as a kind of medium and a physical space. Featuring Pinder's video and objects from the past two decades, the exhibition explores the slippages between human and machine, from the anthropomorphizing of cars to the physical force of the human body. Sound, from sampled music to garbled noise, plays a driving force in Pinder's videos as well as objects, ranging from quotidian to extraterrestrial.

For Pinder, the automobile is like a shell or skin—a kind of sanctuary. He has always been fascinated with cars and the connection between driver and vehicle as powerful metaphor for the body. It can serve as an extension of one's own body but also a formidable force to be controlled and exerted by its driver. In Sonic Boom (2018), the most recent performance video in his "Inertia Cycle" series, Pinder tests the limits of a red 77' Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale once owned by a veteran. The performance is an extension of Pinder's interest in physicality, endurance, and exertion and the emotional and sometimes meditative response it elicits.

The exhibition title, Thin Skin/ Shock Layer, is drawn from a 2014 work in the exhibition by the same name. In this piece, Pinder utilizes salvaged street lines once used to demarcate lanes in the road to create a kind of textile. The lines peeled from the road bear signs of age and wear—having been driven over countless times—but also retain traces of their original reflective quality. Implicit in the work are references to racial trauma and deterioration, but also resilience. More obliquely, Pinder alludes to speed and sound—invoking theories relating to hypersonic aerodynamics and car design to describe the time-worn tapestry. The sound-based sculpture Funknik (2014), Pinder's refashioning of the Soviet-era satellite Sputnik I, similarly relies on found materials imbued with history and life. The orb-like object is faced in decorative tin from an old house in Baltimore and pulsates with layered sound coming from its embedded speakers. Like a relic of the Space Race that has fallen from the sky, Funknik, transmits Pinder's reflections on the past and fantasies of the future.

Jefferson Pinder received a BA in Theatre at University of Maryland in 1993 and an MFA from the Asolo Theatre Conservatory MFA Program Theatre at Florida State University in 1994. He went on to receive an MFA in Painting and Mixed Media at the University of Maryland in 2003. He has been featured in numerous group and solo shows including exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, Showroom Mama in Rotterdam, Netherlands, The Tate Modern in the UK, The Phillips Collection, and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Recently, Pinder was exhibited at the 2016 Shanghai Biennale, and at the new Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. He was awarded the 2016 United States Artist Award in the field of performance. He also was the recipient of the 2017 Moving Image Acquisition award and was a 2017 Guggenheim Foundation fine arts fellow. Pinder resides in Chicago, where he is Professor of Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Image: Jefferson Pinder, Funknik, 2014. Tin from Baltimore house, steel, wood, speakers, and audio. 80 x 60 x 52 in.; 45 minutes. Courtesy of the artist.