Exhabitations

source:cueartfoundationorg
Exhabitations is an installation by San Francisco-based artist Jeremiah Barber, culminating in a one-night performance titled If Only My Own Person. In this endurance work, set in complete darkness, the artist bounds horizontally into the air with a paper body replica. An occasional burst of light illuminates the apex of the jump, leaving the floating after-images of levitation attempts in the eyes of the audience.

Barber makes minimalist, body-based works that dredge up the struggle of seeing the self with clarity. Artifice, trickery, and the reversal of gravity are at the heart of these works, on view in the gallery from July 18-20. In his performance work, Barber appears as a character who desires certain knowledge of the body where none can be found. In Dreamburn, (2012) Barber suspends a paper body replica above a pool of water and, lying below, sets it on fire. In Para/sel/llel/ves, (2016) fragmented paper body parts fall slowly towards the surface of a pool, soaking up water and collapsing. In these works, the performer treads the path to transcendence, but finds the vehicle of the body unreliable.

Exhabitations is inspired by an accidental discovery by Swiss neuroscientists who triggered an out-of-body experience in a patient being tested for brain tissue damage. The electrical stimulation of the brain’s temporal parietal junction provides a neurological explanation for what would otherwise be considered a mystical experience. In Exhabitations, Barber presents the body as the anchor that holds us from our dreams and visions of ourselves.

Jeremiah Barber is a visual and performance artist who studies transcendence through absurdity and humor. Tackling the impractical object and the impossible task, his performances explore the body as heroic, ephemeral, and lucid. He has created pieces for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Chicago Cultural Center, and has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA, and The LAB in San Francisco. He is a former member of Marina Abramovic’s Independent Performance Group. Barber received an MFA from Stanford University, and has been a resident at the Cité Internationale de Arts in Paris, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and San Francisco’s Recology. In 2015 Barber was awarded the prestigious Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation. He lives in San Francisco, CA.

This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by The SHS Foundation, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and general operating support from the New York State Council on the Arts.
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source:sustainedbyvisionscom
“I am an artist who uses sculpture, performance and installation to explore dislocated views of the body. My work takes the form of research into the unknown, somewhere between art, science and belief. My performances are often the first step, actions that are conducted one time only, in order to ask and answer questions of the limitation of the body. My objects and installations are extensions of the live experience, placing the viewer as performer or activator. The recurring images in my work—fragmented limbs, mirrored images of the self, dark and sublime landscapes—appear as serious or laughable obstacles.”
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source:fleishhackerfoundationorg
Jeremiah Barber is a visual and performance artist who studies transcendence through absurdity and humor. Tackling the impractical object and the impossible task, he performs at times for an audience of none. He has created pieces for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Chicago Cultural Center, and has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA, and The LAB in San Francisco. He is a former member of Marina Abramovic’s Independent Performance Group. In 2010 Barber received an MFA from Stanford University, where he now lectures in Experimental Media Art. He is a recent recipient of a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission, for which he will create a series of works in public sites.