Last summer, I was lucky enough to see the Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic exhibit at the Ogden. Jim Roche retired as Professor of Art at Florida State in 2011. His works have been included at the Whitney, the Venice Biennale, and Paris Biennale, and has been reviewed by Art Forum, Time, the NYT, and The New Yorker.
This is his ‘Loch Ness Mama Playing’
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Via Daily Serving: “The Lochness was something I had thought about for a long time. I guess I saw myself as this creature that no one new about. But I knew I existed.”
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His Dr. Curve motorcycle legend cartography:
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This series was described as “inspired equally by W.C. Rice’s Cross Garden (a self-taught environment in Prattville, Alabama), the vernacular cross memorials found throughout the back roads of the South, and what Roche describes as “those fire-and-brimstone preachers on the low-watt radio stations.”
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I have a set of images from several visits to W.C. Rice’s Cross Garden here on Flickr.
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In this same vein, Jim Roche actually had a part in Silence of the Lambs — he was the televangelist broadcasting on the television outside Hannibal Lecter’s cell. The full performance is here:
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From his series, ‘Some Americans Feel Like This’:
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Gambit has it:
There’s a distinctly ad hoc, gonzo, radical outsider vibe going on in this big retrospective going back to the 1960s, an era that permeates much of his oeuvre.
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Most looking forward to at the Ogden: the Maude Schuyler Clay exhibit that opens October 1, 2016.