Join us for a preview of Jacolby Satterwhite’s newly commissioned work En Plein Air: Music of Objective Romance. In this piece, the artist builds an immersive virtual reality dreamscape from his mother Patricia’s archive of twelve a cappella albums, originally recorded in the late 90s on consumer-grade cassette tapes. During this special Performance in Progress preview weekend, view excerpts of this new work, hear from the artist in person, and drop in for screenings of Satterwhite’s video works The Matriarch’s Rhapsody (2012) and Reifying Desire 1–6 (2012–14).
New York-based artist Jacolby Satterwhite’s training as a painter is evident in the detailed and expertly rendered virtual reality worlds that he creates. Blending genres, including video, performance, 3D animation, and drawing, Satterwhite explores themes of memory, desire, and personal and public mythology. He earned a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Arts (2008), an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania (2010), and attended the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture (2009). His recent works draw on his mother Patricia’s drawings and music recordings as a primary resource. An extension and interpretation of Patricia‘s original practice, Satterwhite says that his work, “[examines] memory, insider/outsider art practices, contemporary surrealist practices, queer phenomenology, and pushes the tensions created during translation and inheritance of studio practice.” Satterwhite’s new commission continues this investigation of home, family, pop culture, and queer identity.
Header image: Jacolby Satterwhite, En Plein Air: Music of Objective Romance, 2016 (detail); image: courtesy the artist
