JACOB TODD BROUSSARD
INVOCATION
Solo exhibition of new paintings by Jacob Todd Broussard
Exhibition Dates:
May 13 - June 30, 2022
Opening Reception:
Friday, May 13, 2022, 5:00-9:00pm
Artist Talk:
Saturday, June 4 @ 11:00am
Rivalry Projects is delighted to present Jacob Todd Broussard: Invocation, an exhibition of new paintings by the artist. This exhibition will be on view at Rivalry from May 13-June 30, 2022 with an opening reception on Friday, May 13, 2022 from 5:00-9:00pm. This is Broussard’s first exhibition with Rivalry Projects having exhibited previously at Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston, MA) and Towards Gallery (Toronto, ON).
Jacob Todd Broussard: Invocation will present paintings which draw inspiration from the ornamental grotesque, creation myths, and mysticism. Among its manifold entry points, Broussard’s paintings also grapple with the concept of hermeticism as a path toward receiving grace. In previous iterations, Broussard has used the artist Forrest Bess - who lived a hermetic existence creating abstract symbol-laden paintings sourced from visions - as a spiritual guidepost. Broussard considers this exhibition a love letter to Bess, while not directly invoking the former’s painterly abstraction.
Paintings within this exhibition draw on southern folklore traditions, such as le feu follet, which is the spectral or phosphorescent lights emitted in swamps, marshes, and bogs. Often seen by travelers at night, bioluminescence is thought to cause this natural phenomena, which has been known to lead wanderers astray and even to their death in swamps. In this and previous bodies of work, Broussard employs le feu follet as a visual and allegorical device to destabilize environments within his paintings.
Invocation also calls on the viewer of each of these paintings to bear witness, and in so doing undermines the tactical relationship between artwork and audience. Invoking in this context oscillates between the artist’s desire to make known the invisible while also reaching into a spiritual ether for guidance. This artwork calls into question the space between the artwork and viewer with each painting performing as a visual lure enticing closer inspection. Similar to le feu follet viewers are transformed into witnesses adding to a cumulative (if invisible) weight of folklore, hermeticism and mystical phenomenology. Broussard’s paintings ask us to occupy a imaginal plane–one that operates not in terms of what one sees, but the manner in which one sees.
