Fat Purple no.111 Painting

Jef Bourgeau is an American photographer, painter and conceptual artist who has become notorious through his sculptures, photography and curatorial work. The most famous and ground-breaking of Bourgeau's work plays on the relationship between iconic imagery and irreverent materials, together forming a new context often drawing upon current controversies and, perhaps, the willfully provocative. Most notable to date are his censored works 'Nigger Toe' and 'Bathtub Jesus', as well as several seminal exhibitions in which he both curated and participated: 'Fear No Art' which was raided by police and brought Bourgeau to trial on obscenity charges, 'Van Gogh's Ear' which was padlocked by the Detroit Institute of Art after only its third day, and 'kaBOOM!' an exhibition where all a contemporary museum's artwork was destroyed on the spot by its patrons and visitors. An undiagnosed dyslexic, Bourgeau never finished his education. He spent his teen years working at a box factory in his home town of Detroit. During that time, utilizing the materials at hand, he began to make and experiment with several pinhole cameras. The early work from these rudimentary cameras developed into dark, moody photographs and paintings. Bourgeau has since remarked that he can only see 'right' through a camera lens. Jef Bourgeau is the founding director of the Museum of New Art (MONA), of Detroit's artCORE (empty storefronts to galleries), and co-founder of the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography. Since he began exhibiting in the early 1990s, American artist Jef Bourgeau has inspired controversy. His practice, which is considered by some to be a provocation against the art world itself, essentially involves the remaking of art and artists, both imagined and real. Bourgeau has been a vexing figure for many and his "interventions" have continued to be viewed as a subversion of traditional notions of artistic practice and integrity. Bourgeau’s art exemplifies the post-modern sense of working in a period when the epoch-making achievements of modern art are already matters of recorded fact. To this end, Bourgeau seems engaged with the vicissitudes of the constructed image, that is, the image’s transposition from one medium and context to another and the traces and consequences of this transfer.