Jeremy Bailey: Less Important Portraits

Jeremy Bailey: Less Important Portraits
Opening June 14th, 7-10pm. On view until July 7th, 2013.
Devotion Gallery
54 Maujer St, Brooklyn NY 11206
http://www.areyoudevoted.com

"As an artist, when I look at crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter.com all I see are the creators, where are the backers? I've been an artist long enough to know that art is about who pays for it. How can important people be satisfied helping others without being recognized themselves? The powerful and wealthy patron should be celebrated the way they have been in the past, in grand portraits commissioned and hung on the walls of museums and galleries.

The portrait has existed as an art tradition for centuries. A well-executed portrait expresses the inner essence of a person. Portraits have primarily memorialized the rich and the powerful as important records of status. For artists they have represented subsistence as paid commissions and an opportunity to demonstrate the latest techniques and technologies for artistic expression.

I am revealing the true inner essence of over 50 backers of a successful Kickstarter campaign I ran in February with their very own 21st century augmented reality portrait. This exhibition will feature over 20 new portraits from Less Important patrons of the series.

As a Famous New Media Artist I have access to the latest techniques and technology, everything necessary for you to truly express yourself is at my fingertips. I've been making myself look amazing in augmented reality self portraits for over 10 years and I've decided it's time to help others look as great as I do."

Bailey’s selected recent exhibitions and performances include Rhizome's Seven on Seven Conference, New work for The New Museum's First Look commission series, Life Feed: New Works by Jeremy Bailey and Antoine Catala, at the New Museum in New York, The Future is Now, Media Arts, Performance and Identity after Nam June Paik, at Tate Liverpool and Myths-Online, at MOSAIC, Polytechnic Museum Moscow, Russia.

Bailey has been extensively exhibiting and performing, since 2003, nationally and internationally. Including: Dadamachinima, Devotion Gallery, (New York, USA), Domain, ZER01 San Jose Biennial, (San Jose, USA), BWNY, Albright Knox, (Buffalo, USA), Colours of the Spectrum Art Metropole (Toronto, ON), Space Invaders, NIMk, (Amsterdam, Netherlands), The Jeremy Bailey Show, HTTP Gallery (London, UK) , Festival International du Film sur lʼArt - Musee d'Art Contemporain (Montreal, QC), Definitely Independent, Transmediale, Akademie der Kuenste (Berlin, Germany) and many more.

Born in 1979 Bailey received his MFA in Video Art from Syracuse University (2006) and an undergraduate degree in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto(2002). He is co-founder of award winning artist video collective 640 480 and performance journalism collective ArtStars*. He has been described by Filmmaker Magazine as "a one man revolution on the way we use video, computers and our bodies to create art". For more info visit http://www.jeremybailey.net

Image: Important Portrait of Addie Wagenknecht, 2013, C print