Rush Jagoe: Parables on Production
This exhibition is a visual journey exploring the intersection of culture and production, structured in three parts.
A Word from the Artist
I believe that making art is a process of understanding my own reactions to the world around me, and the piece that ultimately hangs on the wall is a lucky byproduct of this process. Driven by this belief and prepared with a camera, notepad, flatbed scanner, paints (and often a truckful of tools and a boat in tow), I seek interaction so that I may begin to understand my curious self. I left journalism long ago after losing faith in objectivity but, ruled by curiosity, I still chase fairness in account.
Often, my bigger reactions to things take the most time to unravel — both in mind and body — and it is this process that feels like the art to me. I ask you, the viewer, to understand that as I present these moments and analogies that could feel weaponized to elicit feeling, I do it to challenge you to do the same work of unravelling so that this art can live longer, outside of my self.
As I do the work of understanding my reactions, themes emerge. Parables on Production pays homage to a theme that won’t stop welling up.
So much of our existence inside of this global corporatocracy is determined by the parameters by which we are allowed to exist. More often than not, those parameters depend on where we fall along the chain of production — what jobs are available to us, what foods we can access, and what kinds of shelter are available for use. By serving a system wherein hoarding and excess are integral to survival, our capacity to solve problems and build new systems that better serve our needs as humans is limited.
Culture is how we make sense of those things en masse; the omnipresent chain of production seeks to offer us cultural responses that prioritize its own efficiency rather than our creativity and insight.
I often reflect on how other animals, plants, and fungi have resolved to provide in the ways of abundance and balance. During those reflections, I often ruminate on how many systems of existence have been dreamed up, negotiated, and implemented with success. And how many of those systems have ultimately been subsumed by this one.
— Rush Jagoe
