Dallas
Centraltrak: The University of Texas at Dallas Artists Residency
Texas inter-media artist Jeff Gibbons is interested in the feedback loop of living creatures, especially when that circle wobbles between equilibrium and disequilibrium. The title of his small exhibition at Centraltrak: The University of Texas at Dallas Artists Residency—“Let the Drip from the Ceiling Become an 8 Foot Hole in the Roof”—aptly expresses the related tension between simple mechanical aberration and full-bore catastrophe. Gibbons’s machines, made from TVs, live cameras, tape-recorded music, VHS tapes, manipulated BitStrip characters, mechanized ballpoint pens slowly drilling holes into the wall, cacti, and the like, mimic the burble and gurgle of living systems in their movement, photosynthesis, and simple circulation of electricity. Gibbons installed several large and small tube TVs in the gallery at Centraltrak. Neither wall-mounted nor arranged harum-scarum, their square plastic bodies and glassy surfaces suggested a certain biomorphism. No longer televising a boxing match or favorite soap opera, they seemed maquettes of life—large-scale models of crystal formations or perhaps species in development on another planet.…see the entire review in the print version of September’s Sculpture magazine.
