NEW YORK: Jayson Musson

Exhibit of Abstract Art

May 7 – June 21, 2014

SALON 94 BOWERY

243 Bowery

New York, NY

Salon 94 Bowery presents Exhibit of Abstract Art, a new body of work from Jayson Musson. In his second solo show with the gallery, Musson was inspired by Modern Art set-pieces from the comic strip Nancy, created by the popular American comic illustrator Ernie Bushmiller who worked on the strip from the 1930ʼs- 80ʼs. Nancy was titled for the star of the comic strip, an inventive and rambunctious 8 year old girl whose iconic face is almost synonymous with the phrase ʻcartoon stripʼ itself.

Throughout Nancyʼs long run, Bushmiller would intermittently poke fun at the then fresh works of modern art as well as modern architecture. The former depicted as works comparable to the dawdling of children, and the latter as simply nonsensical. According to Musson, “Iʼm drawn to Ernie Bushmillerʼs antagonistic response to modernism and mainly his vitriolic caricature of it. Heʼs turned off by Modernismʼs seeming uselessness, itʼs sophistry, itʼs ʻshamʼ quality, and its ʻeasinessʼ. Buried in his response to the ʻfadʼ of the modern lays a particular kind of fear, the fear of someone witnessing the world change and not having a place in the new order of cultural value. In some ways Bushmiller spoke for a generation watching familiar systems of meaning expire. However, in Bushmillerʼs caricature of art, he drafted some perfect paintings. Where one would see a reductionist punchline, I see a perfection of form in Bushmillerʼs art gags. In his pejorative depictions of abstraction lay a symmetry, balance, and economy of form that is simply exceptional.”

Similar to Mussonʼs use of scraps of sweaters to create paintings in his last body of work, employing Bushmillerʼs work explores the notion of value in art, how it is derived, and who connotes value. The project also skirts that age-old question of ʻwhat is artʼ when artʼs antagonisms can be absorbed into the cannon. Musson continues, “To recreate some of these works, 40-50 years later, and set them into the context of exhibiting them as verifiable works of art is perverse in a way, and perhaps confirms Bushmillerʼs point of view about the whole operation of art. In the end, and despite all the meaning that can be excavated from deconstructing the caricature and parody, Iʼm drawn to Bushmillerʼs brilliant humor. Myself a ‘gag man’, explorative play and humor have been the primary motivating force behind much of my artwork.”

Jayson Musson works in a variety of mediums: painting, photography, video and more. A self-proclaimed “dual citizen” of Philadelphia and New York, Musson received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of Arts, Philadelphia and his MFA in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Jayson Musson lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Exhibit Link

POST: Jayson Musson / NYTimes

Jayson Musson photographed by James Estrin for The New York Times

Biting Humor Aimed at Art
By Austin Considine | New York Times
February 29, 2012

WHEN Damien Hirst’s spot paintings opened at 11 Gagosian galleries worldwide in January, critics busied themselves redrawing many of the familiar battle lines that have helped Mr. Hirst become very rich.

Meanwhile, a YouTube video critique featuring Hennessy Youngman, a video character who wears a goofy baseball cap and layers of gold chains, was going viral in the art world, mixing hip-hop lingo and profanity with high-minded art criticism.

“I understand that, as an artist, if you actually touch your own artwork, the value of said artwork is severely depreciated,” he says wryly about Mr. Hirst’s paintings, which are made by assistants and can sell for millions of dollars.

The video was part of a YouTube series called “Art Thoughtz” created by and starring a Brooklyn artist named Jayson Musson. (The character Hennessy Youngman, he said, is a reference to the standup comic and Hennessy cognac, a favorite reference in hip-hop music.) His roughly two dozen videos on topics like “relational aesthetics,” “the sublime” and “Poetic Waxin’ ” have made him something of a court jester to the art establishment.

Mr. Musson’s following isn’t enormous: His videos have received nearly 770,000 views since April 2010. But his following is well placed. Art in America described him as “Ali G with an M.F.A.” ArtNet, an art market Web site, called him “George Carlin and Paul Mooney rolled into one.” The Huffington Post described the videos as work “through which serious criticism flows with a sick beat.”

“Everyone sees it as a real, critical performance, and a lot of that is because most of his audience is right here in the art world,” said Naomi Beckwith, a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, which has twice invited Mr. Musson to lecture in character. “They get it,” she said. “They understand that the character that’s speaking shouldn’t have access to that knowledge, so therefore there must be some kind of subterfuge going on.”

The videos are funny partly because they are incongruous: insightful jabs made by a hip-hop personality whose faux-outsider perspective is intended to challenge the art world’s pretensions and inaccessibility. In his most-watched video, “How to Make an Art,” Hennessy sarcastically criticizes his audience for using terms like “talent” with regard to art — while wearing a baseball cap depicting Ernie from “Sesame Street” and an outsize medallion of a pharaoh.

“Hennessy comes out of a specific reaction to graduate school and the academic, fine-art world that I was exposed to at school,” said Mr. Musson, who received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania last spring. The character starts partly from “a place of anger,” though, for him, “the relationship between anger and laughter are very, very close,” he added.

The blend makes for a poignant critique, said Brian Boucher, an editor and critic at Art in America, who interviewed Hennessy, the character, by e-mail last March. “Bringing urban black language and attitudes to the generally pretty-white world of contemporary art commentary just seemed unbelievably bold, and once he did it, it seemed incredible no one had done it before, at least not so effectively,” Mr. Boucher said.

In person, Mr. Musson, 34, presents a contrast to the swearing, swaggering Hennessy. Gone are the heavy gold chains, the puffy coats and hard-core language (mostly). He arrived at a Brooklyn pizzeria in a tan cardigan and an understated knit cap — more Bob Ross than Jay-Z.

Mr. Musson was born in the Bronx and grew up in Spring Valley, N.Y., a suburban village with a large African-American and Caribbean population. At 17, he moved to Philadelphia to attend college and stayed for his master’s. In August, he moved to Brooklyn.

Though he recognizes that the popularity of his videos somewhat overshadows his other work at the moment, Mr. Musson continues to produce paintings and cartoonlike drawings, which can be viewed on his Web site, jaysonmusson.com. Like his videos, much of it employs humor to navigate serious issues like politics, race and sex.

“I feel like a big part of my work is always waiting for the joke,” he said. “It’s a serendipitous way of working, but it’s always how I work.”



YOUTube: ART THOUGHTZ: To Catch A Millennial (MCA Chicago lecture) 

Source

Hennessy Youngman's YouTube Channel

Jayson Musson online