2005 MFA Thesis Exhibition Review
By Timothy Belknap

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My dear friends, Jeremy’s work is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% upholstery.  This math doesn’t add up right because Jeremy does not abide by any conceivable artist standard, he does not generate his object in response to the history of art nor his subject from philosophical lingo.

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Jeremy’s forms, from what seems to be a Jean Arp customized foam shop, uses the idea of upholstery as an update to the minimal notion of what a shape is. Furniture that functions better as an object of desire then a décor addition. His recent hot pink chair allows one to sit on the crest of being licked. A giant vibrating tongue shape that is an achievement in the notion of violation. If a person sits down, they are forced to feel the sensation of smooth, vibrating, soft vinyl, and a possible embarrassment of enjoyment. With an art museum audience told not to touch and the insider art commentary that keeps them in the dark.  Jeremy has lit and violated the secret codes that prevent painters from painting red, big, and shiny and sculptors from making all kitsch figurines. Give the audience what they want and then see what they do to with it.

His MFA show is nothing short of a b/w Frankenstein film taken to “West Coast Customs” Car Shop for an overhaul. A 1930’s fantasy laboratory with more buttons and lights then there are possible functions. Even the floor has been overhauled from stone to soft foam. Sheet metal sci-fi gadgets and motion activated props makes the viewers become the lightning that brought the monster to life.

 

Why the laboratory? Jeremy needs no further research into what makes an eye candy soft object. What he does now is watch a guinea pigged audience refrain from being the subject in a violation of seduction.  The material enigmas that have the properties of a drug induced color spectrum and fetishized texture. But then why wouldn’t you touch them?