I caught this in an e-mail from Jeffers.  Nofziger is worth checking out.

The UML Art Department, Web Art & Design Area is pleased to have

Untitled (UMA! with three planes) by Jim Jeffers, 2009

I walked around Genii Loci (Ghosts of Protection) an exhibition by Jim Jeffers (the guy who runs this site) looking for a piece I knew only to find it not included.  I asked Jim where the “rabbit with the gas mask and the three planes” piece was.  He told me it was hanging in the lobby of the Dean of U-Mass Lowell’s office.  I thought, “Cool” and then on to other matters.  I would not have given the matter another thought except while out with Jim and Jean, I mention to Jean how much I dig the drawing of Uma (their rabbit, the model for the piece), and she asks me if I want to buy it as it is back from U-Mass Lowell.  I’m thinking I don’t have the cash, but then I think, “why is it back?”  So she tells me it only hung for about two weeks before someone in the administration found it “inappropriate.”

“What the fuck?”  I say, “Why? How could this image be ‘inappropriate’?”

Now I understand that maybe the chesty gas-masked ladies might set the imagination off, but a rabbit?  The semiological leap-frogging from rabbit to bunny to playboy playmate might be doable, but who wants to do that?  I think this kind of editing is the symptom of a much larger unspoken secret in Massachusetts.  People here are afraid.  Afraid of seeming unseemly, but ‘gawd’ knows this is only thin veneer.  For it takes a special kind of dirty mind to jump from rabbit to bunny to playmate to bondage scene to the apocalypse!  And it takes a mind so dark and dirty to think the thin layer of prophylactic-like ‘protection’ encasing the purity of essential moral rectitude could be ‘offended’ or compromised by an image of a rabbit in a gas mask that it would defy measure.  People are busy in Massachusetts keeping us ’safe’ from burned-out LED Mooninites and MIT students who are too smart to think the rest of the neighborhood could be so dumb.  Puritans know best what is filthy down below.  Okay, so those of you reading this in the deep south are thinking, “Massachusetts is filled with liberal elites who love abortions and bible burning right?”  No, the brand of liberalness in Massachusetts is grounded in caring for those less fortunate than you.  Which I might point out is not out of line with over wrought protection. After all in Massachusetts you MUST have health insurance or pay a penalty. And again this is not out of step with ‘appropriateness’ and “putting yourself in other people’s shoes.”  My problem with this ideal taken to extreme is “I know what is best for you” arrogance and eventual intolerance.  My response is, “Fuck no, you don’t know me.” and “with that said I think you underestimate the audience in general.”  There are heros who push community standards, Jeffers, sure ain’t one of them.

Perhaps ‘gawd’ blessed greater Boston with a paucity of natural disasters and cursed it with appallingly suck weather, but lighten up will you.  ”Art is the Handmaid of Human Good” (Lowell City Motto) don’t second guess the audience, they are smarter than you think (mostly).

Ritual ideas relativety
Only buildings no people prophecy
Timeslide place to hide nudge reality
Foresight minds wide magic imagery

Space guy fell from the sky
Scratched my head and wondered why
Time slide into time
Across international dateline
Scientist eats bubblegum
Hall of fame baseball
Senators a Hoodlum
Big chiefs in the hall
Ritual ideas relativety
Only buildings no people prophecy
Timeslide place to hide nudge reality
Foresight minds wide magic imagery

Lyrics from “E=MC2″ by Big Audio Dynamite

Bucky ROYGBIV by Matthew Day Jackson, 2007

Matthew Day Jackson, now playing at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center (May 8th-July 12th, 2009), sets fire to the place.  He knows we know he knows, and he goes there.  For example, in Lonesome Soldier (2008) one is instantly reminded of Charles Ray’s Plank Piece (1973), which was a humanized performance riff on Richard Serra’s Prop (1968), but Jackson’s is not a sheet of lead, or his own body, but rather a felt space man, oh Beuys!  We are in the presence of greatness, all the time.  But, at times it feels a little bit like the Leonardo DiCaprio / Claire Danes version of Romeo and Juliet, in that Jackson brings guns instead of swords, or carbon fiber instead of marble; but is it still Brancusi?  I guess as much as that movie was Shakespeare.  We know, the permission for this work was hard fought, it takes guts to place a Hemi drag racing motor on rod power pyramids (like my parents picked-up at the crystal-hopped new age store when I was a kid) as Jackson does in Heart of Prometheus (2009).  There are themes here (racing, space chasing, atom bombing, geodesics, so on), but I can’t help thinking Jackson’s meta-story is getting thick like another Matthew, Barney.  This is not bad, and in fact maybe the saving grace of Jackson’s work, his earnest sincerity.  For no matter how many layers of great artists (and thinkers, and, and, and) he can stack like a Dagwood, I believe Matthew Day Jackson believes in this work.  And faith goes along way here, even tangled in the miasma of testosterone-fulled modernism on fucking atomic-powered Red Bull.

Go see it before it comes down, and check out Duncan Campbell’s film Bernadette in the other gallery, but bring a hoody it’s cold in there.

Chariot II-I Like America and America Likes Me by Matthew Day Jackson, 2008

P.S. I thought about just leaving the B.A.D. lyric quote as the review, I heard it on the radio on the way home, and thought it summed up the exhibition well.  But, ElPezCore would have none of it!

Last night in Lowell, MA - Something was happening at 119 Gallery, there was cooking smoke, a belly dancer, porn from the advent of moving image, and fuck-an-A, ART!  I cruised by the opening of Seduce Me curated by Setheyny Pen, and featuring the work of: Ebenezer Archer Kling, Anthony Palocci Jr, Christopher Eastwood, Hali Vik, Christine Tuccelli, and Timothy Goguen. And was pleasantly surprised to find an elegant show of thoughtful work by a crew of smart young artists.  Concurrently, was “Improvised Comfort Device (food) (Superhero Action)” a performance by relative old-timer, Jim Jeffers: “as a piece [sic] offering to swine 40 pounds of chicken will be grilled and eaten” (from a flyer at the event).  Where, Jeffers dressed in a red jump suit, and partially covered by a blue tarp strung off the back of a hatch-back, grilled chicken and served it up to the tentative audience.

Standing out were the tightly crafted 40’s (40 oz. beer bottles) with sexy lesbian silhouettes, both clearly celebratory but evoking some sad alcoholic fantasy of lesbian prosthetic copulation, black & white and cracking, by Timothy Goguen.  Also, Ebenezer Archer Kling’s drawings, abstracting images pulled from ukiyo-e Japanese erotica, are quirky, smart, and delightful.  Jeffers, who was not on the bill for Seduce Me, must have crashed the party, but at least he brought beer and chicken…fucking good chicken, served on a blue blanket (like my little brother sucked his thumb through until he was twelve), evidently these “Improvised Comfort Devices” are a series, can’t wait to see what’s next!
(Jeffers, has a solo exhibition coming up a UMass Lowell this Fall: http://www.uml.edu/Dept/Art/galleries/university-gallery.htm)

Check out Seduce Me curated by Setheyny Pen, at 119 Gallery up now until July 11th, 2009, worth the trip to Lowell, MA!
(and check out the kick-ass Cambodian restaurant on the corner by the gallery, so good).