Lehmann Maupin would like to announce an exhibition of new work by Jeffrey Vallance. Born in California, Vallance now lives and works in Sweden, where he teaches at Umeå University. This is Vallance's second solo exhibition at Lehmann Maupin.
Jeffrey Vallance explores miraculous phenomena, paranormal events, and bizarre relationships between the religious and the secular. He explores these issues in various ways – through painting, drawing, video, performance, and the written word (Vallance is a regular contributor to both the L.A. Weekly and Fortean Times, a newspaper of paranormal experiences.) Since the early 1970s, Vallance has shown his work internationally in both traditional museum and gallery settings as well as in more unconventional institutions such as The Liberace Museum in Las Vegas and Ron Lee's World of Clowns Museum in Henderson, Nevada.
"The Virgin, The Poet, and The President" consists of life-size wax sculptures of the Virgin of Guadalupe, poet Dante Alighieri, and former president Richard Nixon. In 1994, Vallance traveled to Mexico City to study the images found within the eyes of a miraculous image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Among the host of historical figures reflected in her eyes, he found the unmistakable visage of Nixon. Dante, whose likeness is based on his actual death mask, is included because of the immense influence the Inferno has had on Vallance's life and work. With these new works, Vallance uses the peculiar medium of wax to continue his personal mythology of bizarre theories and unusual associations.