We Build Excitement

source: jessesugarmann

Jesse Sugarmann is an interdisciplinary artist working in video, performance, sculpture, and fibers. His work engages the automotive industry as a manufacture of human identity, accessing automotive history as an index of both cultural identity and social history. Jesse has exhibited work both nationally and internationally in venues such as the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; el Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon; the Banff Center, Canada; Filmbase, Ireland; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Drift Station, Omaha; Fugitive Projects, Nashville; and the 2010 Portland Biennial. His work has been written about in publications including ArtForum, Art Papers, ART LTD, Art Cards, Art Fag City, Art Car Nation, ArtSlant, and the New York Times. He is represented by Portland’s Fourteen30 Contemporary and is the recipient of a 2012 Creative Capital film/video grant. Jesse lives and works in Bakersfield, California.

“I am interested in the way that car accidents function as instant monuments to traumatic events. We look at car accidents with the same emotions and energies that we bring to a monument, enduring a moment of adjacency to a totem of violence and death. I engage the car accident using the visual language of monument, combining the elegance and geometric balance of the monument with the chance and violence of the car wreck.” – JS
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source: picaorg

Jesse Sugarmann is an interdisciplinary artist working in video, performance, and sculpture. His work engages the automotive industry as a manufacturer of human identity, accessing automotive history as an index of both cultural identity and social development. Jesse has exhibited work in venues such as the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; el Museo Tamayo, Mexico; Southern Exposure, San Francisco; the Banff Center, Canada; Filmbase, Ireland; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Michael Strogoff, Marfa; el Museo de Arte Moderno de Santander, Spain; Drift Station, Omaha; Spirit Abuse, Albuquerque; the Knockdown Center, New York; Fugitive Projects, Nashville; the 21c Museum, Louisville; and High Desert Test Sites 2013. His work has been written about in publications including ArtForum, Art Papers, ART LTD, Art Cards, Art Fag City, Frieze Magazine and The New York Times. Jesse lives and works in Bakersfield, California.
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source: creative-capitalorg

The American auto industry is a manufacturer of personal and cultural identity. The failure of the American auto industry was therefore a failure of self and the closure of several longstanding automotive marquees equated a loss of cultural identity. Shot at a decommissioned Pontiac dealership in Pontiac, Michigan, We Build Excitement is an experimental documentary featuring an environmental study of a shuttered car dealership, punctuated by sculptural car wrecks and interpretive works performed by car salesmen. We Build Excitement isolates and categorizes the portion of identity that has been lost by the auto industry’s degeneration, documenting the social scars left by its breakdown.