THE MUSEUM IS THE MEDIUM

HOW TO BUILD A MUSEUM: In a Cornfield, In a Closet, In a Truck... A Museum on Every Corner.

Jef Bourgeau is one of the great minds in today’s art. He is the ultimate fabulist, challenging all our assumptions about art. Throughout his career Bourgeau has fashioned his own identity as one might manipulate an artistic medium, drawing on a fundamental model from his own generation, not so much preoccupied with the issue of identity as suspending it. Bourgeau exemplifies post-20th century theories of the self in which identity derives from an innate multiplicity that presents itself to the world in a shifting set of roles and exigencies. His work is an on-going narrative yet without a story. Or, at the least, without resolution. There is a tension in his work that is relentless; like all great art, never entirely allowing the viewer the comfort of completing the imagery. Bourgeau’s work has an allusive Duchampian wit, a Magrittian mystery, and a diabolic Swiftian mastery. Since narrative plays as a primary means of organizing people's lives and experiences, Bourgeau has created a long string of art narratives that some critics have described as superfictions. Other critics have suggested that his work is so far beyond what can properly be considered art, that they use the term “post-art” to describe it. Yet within all these definitions Bourgeau has set up a powerful negative logic, aimed to question the nature of art and art institutions. And, most profoundly, the culture that builds and decides such things. - Jan van der Marck, THE ART OF JEF BOURGEAU

Produced by Stephen McGee Films