In New York’s RARE Gallery, Baltimore artist Jimmy Joe Roche has created a provocative body of work, uniting new and more traditional media around the theme of performance. Titled Under Pressure, the solo exhibition is on view through Feb. 3.
In four riveting videos, we see him as the sole actor, assuming very different personas drawn from history, pop culture, and his own personal mythology. In Homelands, the mood changes rapidly from persona to persona, punctuated by brilliant flashes of white light. Jimmy Joe meditates as a robed Buddha perched on a folded afghan. Then, he is a naked figure, perhaps a vampire, painted with jello and icing, breathing heavily as he jumps up and down in slow motion.
He reappears, clothed, buzzing a saw, or maybe just an electric knife, which spews magical blue bubbles. The threat of violence builds. In a chilling scene shot in the iconic Bromo Seltzer Tower, his body pulsates and his voice trembles as the video frames are sped up. Firing a gun at us, he pleads for God to come down and talk to him. “I don’t want to be a … devil.”
In another scene, a masked figure draped in orange squats in an autumnal forest. Silent, he’s holding an axe that suggests impending violence. Near the end, we see Jimmy Joe’s head connected to an exploding machine. Are these the last-minute memories of an executed madman?
In Peacing Out, a grinning Jimmy Joe, nearly motionless, raises his hand in a peace sign. Animated fireworks and measured drumming suggest the passage of time. Music often plays a role in his works, not surprising for an artist allied with Wham City.
In Neutral Death Test, electronic sounds—sometimes beeping, sometimes a high pitched squeal, sometimes static or barely audible music—serves as the soundtrack. It accompanies manipulated clips of a recognizable Jimmy Joe, the artist as a death figure, and fragmented pixels that move into a dynamic, 21st-century abstraction.
Despite the fact that this work is very much of the present moment, Jimmy Joe must have reflected on great artists at work during his lifetime. There are a couple of moments when I see some of Andy Warhol in Under Pressure—or maybe there is just a common attraction to certain elements of pop culture. The video Electric Piss Test uses the human skull, so frequently in Andy’s work a reminder of death. And if you blink, Jimmy Joe’s Deep Horizon could be a Warhol Rorschach.
This is a great moment for Charm City in the Big Apple! For more about Jimmy Joe, visit his site.
©2010 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Doreen Bolger is always on the move because she can’t stop seeing, supporting, and writing about the arts in and around Baltimore City. Her lengthy love affair for the arts began in Long Island when her father, an executive in the textile industry, brought home breathtaking fabrics every night from the heart of the garment district. 