FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Elaine L. Jacob Gallery
Wayne State University
480 W. Hancock St.
Detroit, MI 48202
(313) 993 7813
DRAWINGS of WAYNE COE: THE PERSONAL and THE POLITICAL COLLIDE/ART LOVERS
Detroit – Wayne Coe will exhibit a selection of eight works on paper from 2007 at the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery at Wayne State University from Friday, May 29 to Saturday, June 29, 2024. Gallery hours are Tuesday & Thursday, 12-5 PM Friday, 12-7 PM. Coe’s artworks are exhibited as part of “Mighty Real Queer Detroit, I’ll Be Your Mirror” biennale. Curator Patrick Burton has described the biennale as “… a dynamic convergence of visual arts, cinema, and live performance, making this artistic celebration a multi-dimensional and immersive experience for all.” Wayne Coe’s career and work spans the spectrum from impassioned political allegories and graphic novels to portraits that examine fantasy and (mixed) identity as a social performance and as a private experience.
Wayne Coe has enjoyed a long-established reputation for his interdisciplinary work. Coe’s work is distinguished by the artist’s rigorous formal analyses of popular consumer art forms and his vision is realized through an astonishing scope of visual skill sets. Coe’s facility was deployed for many years in the film and television industries. However, Wayne Coe has equally been at home in the gallery and museum worlds where audiences have experienced the artist’s meticulous wide-ranging productions of highly informed artworks taking on a variety of forms from postage stamps to posters, to oil-on-canvas to features and videos to highly acclaimed sand-painting performances realized nationally.
For “Mighty Real Queer Detroit, I’ll be Your Mirror” the artist will show an introverted side of himself by selecting from his archives eight rarely exhibited ink-on-watercolor paper works from 2007, his ART LOVERS series. Each framed drawing measures 8 inches by 5 inches. Each drawing refers to large-scale limited-edition art “posters” the artist produced from 2009 through 2010. The imagery in each of the large posters, in turn, referred to the real-time images Coe literally fashioned using sand as his medium poured incrementally on sidewalks adjoining galleries, museums, auction houses, and movie theater sites. Primary and secondary art marketing locations on the East Coast and West Coast served as social contexts for Coe’s now-legendary painting performances that were in effect odes to ephemerality and loss. In the selection of Coe’s at Elaine L. Jacob’s Gallery an intimacy of viewing experience is matched by a paradoxically raw, extraverted and vitalistic energy that emerges from the works’s presence on the gallery wall. The title of each artwork tells a story. “Scumble Bum”, “Prison for Life” and “55th Street Playhouse” for example intimate Coe’s celebration of his affection for Queer contributions to art and cinema as they allude to Warhol’s ushering in what Coe calls “… gay male personae advertising to fine art marketing.”
Performances: Deitch Projects (Borofsky), May 8, 2009; PaceWildenstein, April 30, 2009; 55th Street PLAYHOUSE (historic all-male theater location, now The London) May 1, 2009, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 10, 2009; Sotheby’s, May 12, 2009; Spartan Theater (historic theater location) May 27, 2009; The New Museum, May 28, 2009; Spartan Theater (historic theater location), May 27, 2009; PRIDEFEST (Christopher Street) Performance, June 28, 2009; Deitch Projects (Wiley), September 3, 2009; PLACE GEORGE POMPIDOU, Paris, France, September 22, 2009; LICHT FELD (Basel), September 19, 2009: Geffen Contemporary, January 20, 2012, LA Art Market, Santa Monica, January 22, 2012, among others.
Coe’s solo exhibitions include Rhonda Saboff, Collisions, Dirt Gallery, Melrose, CA (2004): Bert Green, Bert Green Fine art, Pop Terror, Los Angeles, CA (2006); Jeff Risley, Park Row Gallery, Chatham, NY (2009), among others. Museum group exhibitions: Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA; Laguna Art Museum, CA; Orange County Center for Contemporary Arts, CA; Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, NJ, among others. Awards: Peter Frank, In American Now, Don O’Melveny, Best of Show; Coe’s work is multi-Emmy nominated & Emmy winning; Feature credits writer/director, Grim Prairie Tales (1993) and We Have Your Kids (2020), Alan NG review 8/10. Press features: Feature: Meg Linton, Juxtapoz Magazine, “Wayne Coe American Hero,” January 2006; Michael Simmons Artillery Magazine, “Wayne Coe dials 911”, September (2006), “Black Sand on Concrete: A Performance Art,” Insight Magazine V 3, # 2, Maya Pope-Capelle, “Wayne Coe: Kick, Push,” Rugged Europe #19, Winter, writer Soeren Siebel, “WILD ART,” Phaidon (2013); Review: Alan Ng, We Have Your Kids, 8/10, 2020, Charlie Finch, “Coefficient,” artnet.com; Shana Nys Dambrot, “Collisions,” FlavorPill, April 27 to May 3 (2004), Mario Cutajar, “Collisions.” Dirt Gallery, ArtScene, March (2004).
Inquiries: Laura Makur, Gallery Manager / Preparator Elaine L. Jacob Gallery / Art Department Gallery
Wayne State University, er5333@wayne.edu
Wayne Coe, Subject: ART LOVERS, waynecoe@gmail.com
