CLAIRE JERVERT

"To say that UFOs have captured the popular imagination of contemporary America would be an understatement. While appearances of blinking ellipsoids, whirling orbs have been reported throughout history, nowhere has the idea of contact with extraterrestrials taken hold so much as in the postwar United States. The UFO Show presents these phenomena in an unexpected way, as inspiration and subject matter for contemporary visual art. Creating two- and three-dimensional work relating directly or symbolically to discs, saucers, and other images common to the subject of UFOs, 12 artists, including Mariko Mori, Ionel Talpazan, Keith Haring, Panamarenko, Oliver Wasow, Claire Jervert, and Paul Laffoley confront, each in their own way, a historically ingrained and commercially reinforced locus of millennial obsession. Also included here are several provocative essays on the subject."

Curator's comment

In the beginning was the Word...

"Claire's recent works speak of a logosphere every bit as metaphysically powerful as John's, though perhaps a bit too modern to be convincingly primordial. Eternal good is reduced to transient goodwill (in the accountant's sense of the term). There is something perverse in exploiting a consumer's self-perpetuating, identity-bolstering feelings of product nostalgia as a catalyst for perpetual consumption, and smart executives know that deeply-conditioned brand loyalty can also slap back with the fervor of a thousand sugar-addled neo-Crusaders. Myths of the Fall are nothing compared to the legend of the New Coke backlash. At the heart of it all is the image, dressed up in a contemporary form that manages to conceal its primal power under the garb of technology and progress. Old dog, new tricks, satisfaction guaranteed."