Jef Bourgeau

Jef Bourgeau is an artist, curator and founding director of Detroit’s contemporary museum.

Jef Bourgeau - PW z003  - digital mixed media on canvas - 36 in x 36 in - 2019
Jef Bourgeau – PW z003 – digital mixed media on canvas – 36” x 36” – 2019

As an early innovator in digital art, Bourgeau has explored the boundaries of constructed space while playing with the interaction of standard perception and art. By folding and crumpling and crushing, his most recent work interrupts familiar art tropes and invites the viewer to untangle that history.

“Since 1981, Jef Bourgeau has eaten the brains and guts of the first hundred years of abstraction – only to transpose it all back onto canvas in new and playful ways as he drags and drops, scans, compresses and unpacks, crashes and reboots.”

Jerry Saltz, A Zombie On The Wall

Jef Bourgeau’s art has exhibited in galleries in London, Amsterdam, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, New Mexico, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Berlin, Beijing, and Austria. His work has shown in museums in Boston, Houston, Columbus, Detroit, San Jose, Cleveland, Portland, Honolulu, Mumbai, Roubaix, Vienna and Tokyo. It has been written about in the NY Times, Chicago Tribune, Art in America, the Village Voice, Art News, Flash Art, Reason, the Art Newspaper, Tema Celeste and Vanity Fair. His work has also been discussed and cited in several books, including: Visual Shock by Michael Kammen (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), Cultural Policy by Toby Miller and George Yudice, and The Artist’s Quest for Inspiration by Peggy Hadden.