JJ PEET
The TV Show
April 5 – May 10, 2009
Press
Anne Wehr for Frieze.com
Amanda Church for Art in America
On Stellar Rays is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of NY-based artist JJ PEET entitled The TV Show. PEET frames the exhibition within the structure of a television program, including elements such as the trailer, a series format, and reruns; produced in video and live broadcast, sculpture, paintings and photographs. The project expands beyond normal spatial and temporal parameters of a gallery exhibition, mimicking actual encounters of the viewer as a networked citizen in our contemporary culture.
PEET premiered a prelude to The TV Show, in the form of a daily newscast entitled This Week’s Kernels, during On Stellar Ray’s preceding group exhibition (February 18 – March 29, 2009). Throughout the course of both exhibitions PEET has been constructing a clandestine installation of a force obliquely referred to as The Resistants, which functions as the protagonist in a broader, albeit abstracted, narrative of The TV Show. The Resistants’ presence is in an undisclosed location and in close proximity to the gallery’s exhibition space, though accessible only by PEET. Evidence of The Resistants’ activities will be visible on a monitor in the gallery, presenting a stream of live and prerecorded video. The Resistants simultaneously responds to subjective day-to-day occurrences and broader socio-political news events as experienced by PEET; effectively creating a sense of indeterminacy and obscuring perceived distinctions between time and place, the topical and political, actuality and delusion.
Central to the exhibition is the weekly presentation of a new TV Show episode, broadcasted live by PEET from The Resistants’ local station, and viewable in a TV room in the gallery. The TV Show’s first episode will premiere at the opening reception. Four subsequent episodes will be broadcasted live each Saturday at 5pm. Reruns will be on view throughout the week.
In addition to broadcast and video, the gallery exhibition will include sculptures, comprised of objects that are found, stolen, laboriously altered, constructed from scratch, and further entangled by the artist. Paintings on view will be for barter only; exchange values determined by The Resistants. Like the video and broadcast components of the show, these objects are activated by PEET’s ongoing project, and provide clues to the elusive nature of The Resistants.
JJ PEET received his MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 2006 and his BFA from University of Minnesota in 1999. The TV Show is his first solo exhibition in New York.