{"id":14897,"date":"2020-01-17T07:44:53","date_gmt":"2020-01-17T12:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=14897"},"modified":"2020-01-17T08:04:09","modified_gmt":"2020-01-17T13:04:09","slug":"jeffu-warmouth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2020\/01\/17\/jeffu-warmouth\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffu Warmouth’s Giant Inflated Head Stuffed With Ideas, Daily Concerns, Neuroses"},"content":{"rendered":"

The centerpiece of Jeffu Warmouth<\/a>\u2019s exhibition \u201cUrgent Blowout,\u201d at Boston Sculptors Gallery<\/a> from Dec. 11, 2019, to Jan. 26, 2020, is the Groton sculptor\u2019s funny, freaky self-portrait.<\/p>\n

Also titled “Urgent Blowout,” it’s a surreal 3D photographic scan of his head, from the bottom of his curly mustache to just above his eyebrows, turned into a 10-foot-wide and nearly 6-foot-tall inflated fabric sculpture. (You can hear the hum of the blower.) It has something of that uncanny feel of a digital image that has been rendered into an object with which you not exactly comfortably share the room. The top of the head is hollowed out so that it serves as a bowl holding three dozen smaller photographic self-portraits printed on inflated fabric heads that feel a bit like balloons\u2014this time the full head, a bit over life-size at 17 inches tall. Each has a different expression\u2014eyes wide or squinting, smiling or scowling, mischievous or pained, as he mugs for the camera. Some of the smaller ones are hung on the nearby wall, a bit like punching bags.<\/p>\n

\"Jeffu<\/a>
Jeffu Warmouth, “Urgent Blowout,” 2019, 54-inch-tall, 120-inch long inflatable fabric sculpture filled with 36 inflatable heads, at Boston Sculptors Gallery, Boston, Dec. 13, 2019. (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201c\u2019Urgent Blowout\u2019 amplifies our desire to fill, inflate, and replicate ourselves,\u201d according to a gallery statement, \u201cwe float around aimlessly bumping into one another, changing course based on wind currents, Black Friday sales, foreign influence, and cat GIFs; we may not know where we’re going, but we remain desperate to get there quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jeffu<\/a>
Jeffu Warmouth, “Urgent Blowout,” 2019, 54-inch-tall, 120-inch long inflatable fabric sculpture filled with 36 inflatable heads, at Boston Sculptors Gallery, Boston, Dec. 13, 2019. (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over his career, Warmouth has often blended conceptually driven performance art and humor\u2014kind of in the neighborhood of Weimaraner photographer William Wegman. Warmouth\u2019s comic 2007 animation and puppet video \u201cSPUDNIK,\u201d which was featured in the \u201c2007 DeCordova Annual Exhibition\u201d in Lincoln, was a mock newsreel\/science documentary, full of potato puns, about a Soviet-styled nation of potato people and their quest for the stars.<\/p>\n

He likes to satirize the language of product marketing\u2014all the advertising slogans and jingles aimed at inflating our desires.\u00a0Warmouth\u2019s \u201cSuperJEFFUMarket,\u201d from 2001 to 2014, represented supermarket shelves socked with \u201cJeffu\u201d-brand cans labeled \u201cAwareness of Mortality Mix,\u201d \u201cBagel Belly,\u201d \u201cCold Blood,\u201d \u201cCrushed Hears,\u201d \u201cCrushed Resolve,\u201d \u201cDrained Self-Esteem,\u201d \u201cUnresolved Guilt,\u201d \u201cChest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warmouth has often been a comic character at the center of his pieces. His \u201cJFC,\u201d \u201cJeffuBurger\u201d and \u201cIl Jeffuria Pizza\u201d from 2009 and 2010 were goofball interactive videos set up like fast food joints that allowed visitors to order from gag menus with Warmouth clowning as the food preparer and server. The pizzeria offered the \u201ciSlice\u201d (think iPhone), a flying \u201cUFO Pizza,\u201d monster dough, and pizzas that could be played like electronic drums (\u201cIf your ears had taste buds, they would say this is delicious,\u201d the announcer explained).<\/p>\n