At The Fallout, Jeff Gillette gets horrifyingly funny
We know it’s been a few weeks since October’s First Friday, but while there’s still a month left to check it out, we wanted to tell you about an exhibit worth seeing now on display at The Fallout Gallery (1551 S. Commerce St. in the Commerce Street Studios). Available for viewing through Nov. 14, the various works by Jeff Gillette adorning the walls of The Fallout are split between two approaches.
One wall is dedicated to dozens of Gillette’s framed works featuring images from various sources altered to sometimes-perverse ends, pieces that Gillette casts as nearly throwaway items (selling them for $10 per). The other three walls of the gallery, however, feature a series of paintings juxtaposing images of pleasure and excess – notably Las Vegas casinos and Disneyland – with visions of apocalyptic destruction and shantytowns.
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Gillette said he uses photos of real slums from his own travels to India or found images on the internet for his paintings. In his eyes, these hastily-assembled shanties, composed of the discarded remains of signs, buildings, vehicles and other found items, could be coming to U.S. shores soon. Why?
“One word,” Gillette said. “Bailout. If it doesn’t work, then we’re screwed.”
If it seems like a bleak perspective, it helps to know a little more about the artist. In his artist statement, Gillette claims that he prefers the overwhelming “filth, degradation and poverty” of India to the “clean, orderly and happy” atmosphere he experienced when he was finally “dragged, kicking and screaming” to Disneyland at 38 years of age. But that disconcerting paradigm is something of which Gillette is fully aware.
“It is absurd. It is irreverent. It is horrifying,” he said of his art. “It is funny.”
Check out an exclusive gallery of photos from the sixth anniversary of First Friday by C. Moon Reed.