Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens and Jillian Mayer

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts presents two new exhibitions that imagine near-future worlds with depth and playfulness, Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens: Look, it’s daybreak, dear, time to sing and Jillian Mayer: TIMESHARE, on view through February 15, 2020.

Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens: Look, it’s daybreak, dear, time to sing
In Look, it’s daybreak, dear, time to sing, Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens present new videos and a profusion of small wooden sculptures that highlight the ties that bind humans with birds, adopting a more-than-human viewpoint to reveal sites of mutual hope and friction.  

A series of sculptures enlists colorful geometric constructions to explore the economic, financial, and ecological processes at play in North American food and biofuel production by materializing graphical representations. Another series evokes old-time game designs and raises both the stakes and the odds against players, highlighting the challenges of multispecies cohabitation in an age of ecological collapse and mass extinction.

The video series The Violence of Care makes the entanglement of avian, human, ecologies, and temporalities immediate and explicit. The projected video animation What Birds Talk About When They Talk humorously critiques humankind’s eternal fascination with bird songs and calls and invites us to consider the effects of our interpretative acts.

Stretching into the distant past while drawing us into possible futures, this exhibition invites us to expand our capacity to imagine and build shared future worlds for generations of avians, humans, and a host of other members of our planetary family. Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens: Look, it’s daybreak, dear, time to sing is curated by Sylvie Fortin, Bemis Curator-in-Residence.

Jillian Mayer: TIMESHARE
Artist Jillian Mayer’s practice explores how technology affects our lives, bodies, and identities. Through investigating the blurred lines between our physical and online worlds, her work is focused on both our dependence on technology and its value to us. But what if the technology we rely on fails us? TIMESHARE explores how art can function and/or aid during times of disaster or even when the planet becomes uninhabitable. Mayer’s work uses the formula of part solutionism part subtle denial mixed with an “everything will be fine” attitude. While the problem might actually be too large to be addressed in any actual sense, the works in this exhibition attempt, with humor and insight.

In TIMESHARE, Mayer transforms the galleries into an a-typical exhibition. Complete with a proliferation of plants flourishing under grow lights, recordings of birds chirping, fountains bubbling, and bright amorphous objects including benches and garden screens dotting the space, the galleries reference both our domestic world and the outdoor space of a garden-cum-sculpture park. Timeshare is a proposal for a near future. Through video, painting, and sculptural objects, Mayer’s environment is a site of refuge and solace centered on the combination of creative speculation and survivalist aesthetics. Jillian Mayer: TIMESHARE is curated by Rachel Adams, Bemis Chief Curator and Director of Programs.

Bemis Center gallery hours: Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 11am–5pm; Thursday 11am–9pm

Admission: Free

Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens: Look, it’s daybreak, dear, time to sing and Jillian Mayer: TIMESHARE are sponsored, in part, by Douglas County, Nebraska; Nebraska Arts Council and Nebraska Cultural Endowment; Omaha Steaks; and Security National Bank. Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens: Look, it’s daybreak, dear, time to sing is presented in partnership with the Consulate General of Canada in Minneapolis and the Québec Government Office in Chicago. The 2019 Curator-in-Residence program is supported, in part, by Carol Gendler and the Mammel Foundation. Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens thank the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for their financial support. Jillian Mayer: TIMESHARE is presented in partnership with the University of Buffalo Art Galleries. Special thanks to Mulhall’s.