Jeff Bailey Gallery is pleased to present Give Them What They Never Knew They Wanted, a group exhibition featuring works by gallery artists and a site-specific installation by guest artist Brice Brown, titled Service Every Day (Dish Queen).
With a range of works by Paolo Arao, Louise Belcourt, Sarah Brenneman, Chris Duncan, Will Duty, Jim Gaylord, Jackie Gendel, Chris Gentile, Joshua Marsh, Christian Maychack, Martin McMurray, Amy Pleasant, Julia Randall, Jon Rappleye, Michael Salter, Mark Shetabi, Mike Peter Smith, Jered Sprecher, Will Yackulic and a solo project by Brice Brown, Give Them What They Never Knew They Wanted functions as a survey exhibition, highlighting the gallery’s program.
Former Vogue editor and fashion icon, Diana Vreeland, once declared, “Give them what they never knew they wanted.” Referring to this expression, the title of the exhibition plays on the current condition of the art market, challenging criteria for collecting work while also acknowledging its commoditization. Celebrating creativity in its many forms, the exhibition embraces eclecticism. Among the paintings, drawings, photography and sculpture on view is Joshua Marsh’s oil painting, vibrating with colorful intensity, depicting a dustpan with hand-held broom. Chris Gentile’s large photograph, I’ve Just Seen the Rock of Ages, features a precisely arranged pile of charcoal against a stark white background. The image implies a commercial language at odds with its mysterious subject. Mark Shetabi’s sculptures function as cigar box guitars, which he will play at the opening reception.
Brice Brown’s Service Every Day (Dish Queen) features eighteenth century Sèvres (French) porcelain plates and bowls decorated in the service ordinaire pattern (random sprays of flowers on a white ground, often with a thin royal blue line rimming the edge). The porcelain is used as a “drawing” element to activate both spaces of the gallery. Plates hung high around the ceiling’s perimeter will interplay with the main exhibition and continue into the office. Here, displayed among these well-preserved antique examples is a piece of “conceptual porcelain,” a Plexiglas box containing shattered remnants of 18th, 19th and 20th century porcelain with a detailed list of contents. The transition from a historical to a contemporary context imparts these artifacts with new life, affirming them as both historical record and sculpture.