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Jordan Eagles: BLOOD / SPIRIT
January 20, 2013 to May 12, 2013
For over a decade, artist Jordan Eagles has garnered public and critical attention for his unique, signature use of animal blood in his works. Through an experimental, self-invented process, the artist combines blood with Plexiglas, UV resin, copper, gauze, and other media to produce arresting works that both fascinate and challenge audiences. Eagles' use of blood evokes reflections on the corporeal and the spiritual, on the scientific and the mystical, on mortality and regeneration.
Eagles began using animal blood as a painting medium 15 years ago in response to a philosophical debate with his best friend about life after death and the connection between body and spirit. Traditional red paint fell short of expressing the emotional vitality that Eagles sought, so he ventured to local slaughterhouses. But the works he created changed shade as the blood oxidized, causing Eagles to develop a means of suspending and encasing the blood in Plexiglas and UV resin in a way that permanently retains the organic material's natural colors, patterns, and textures. His innovative technique challenges nature by preventing the works from decomposing.
Even the very processes by which Eagles prepares his medium show a ritualistic sensibility. He uses various mark-making methods, including layering the blood at different densities as well as heating, burning, and aging the material. Copper, an electrical conductor, imparts a fiery energy to some works. Loosely woven gauze saturated with blood and encased in Plexiglas echoes burial cloths and ancient wrapping rituals. In some instances, decomposed blood is ground into dust and tossed into the works as a sign of passing and change. Eagles also creates immersive "blood illumination" pieces in which transparent preserved blood works are projected onto the walls.
The MOCRA exhibition includes examples of all of these techniques. In MOCRA's unique former chapel space, the potency of these themes becomes particularly acute. Highly textural and dimensional works, most incorporating copper, will be presented in MOCRA's side chapel galleries, while a site-specific installation of "blood illumination" pieces will be projected onto the walls and ceiling of MOCRA's balcony gallery. The centerpiece is the massive nine-panel, 32-foot-wide installation, BAR 1-9, on display in MOCRA's central nave gallery.
Jordan Eagles received his BA in Fine Arts/Media Studies from New York University's Gallatin School for Individualized Studies in 1999. Eagles has been profiled in TIME, The New York Times, New York Magazine, FRAME, ArtInfo.com, and The Huffington Post, and his work is found in numerous private and public collections, including the Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA), the Princeton University Art Museum (Princeton, NJ), the University of Michigan Museum of Art (Ann Arbor, MI), the Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, MA) and the Everson Museum (Syracuse, NY). His work has been shown at venues including the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT), the High Museum (Atlanta, GA), the Elmhurst Museum (Elmhurst, IL), the Mobile Museum of Art (Mobile, AL), Trinity Museum at Trinity Church, Wall Street (New York, NY) and most recently at the International Museum of Surgical Science (Chicago, IL). Simultaneous with BLOOD / SPIRIT at MOCRA, Eagles will have exhibitions at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey (Summit, NJ) and the Everhart Museum (Scranton, PA).
MOCRA thanks Causey Contemporary (New York, NY) and Krause Gallery (New York, NY), for their generous assistance in the organization of this exhibition. We are also grateful to the collectors who lent their works to the exhibition.
above:
Installation view of Jordan Eagles: BLOOD / SPIRIT at MOCRA, 2013. Photo by Jeffrey Vaughn.
Exhibition |
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Bernard Maisner: The Hourglass and the Spiral |
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre |
Erika Diettes: Sudarios |
Regina DeLuise: Vast Bhutan 鈥 Images from the Phenomenal World |
Calligraphic Art of Salma Arastu |
Thresholds: MOCRA at 20 - Part Two, The Second Decade |
Rebecca Niederlander: Axis Mundi |
Jordan Eagles: BLOOD / SPIRIT |
Thresholds: MOCRA at 20 - Part One, The First Decade |
Archie Granot: The Papercut Haggadah |
A Tribute to Frederick J. Brown |
Patrick Graham: Thirty Years 鈥 The Silence Becomes the Painting |
Adrian Kellard: The Learned Art of Compassion |
Good Friday: The Suffering Christ in Contemporary Art |
James Rosen: The Artist and the Capable Observer |
MOCRA at Fifteen: Good Friday |
Michael Byron: Cosmic Tears |
Miao Xiaochun: The Last Judgment in Cyberspace |
MOCRA at Fifteen: Pursuit of the Spirit |
Oskar Fischinger: Movement and Spirit |
The Celluloid Bible: Marketing Films Inspired by Scripture |
Arshile Gorky: The Early Years 鈥 Drawings and Paintings, 1927鈥1937 |
Andy Warhol: Silver Clouds |
Junko Chodos: The Breath of Consciousness |
DoDo Jin Ming: Land and Sea |
Rito, Espejo y Ojo / Ritual, Mirror and Eye: Photography by Luis Gonz谩lez-Palma, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Pablo Soria |
Radiant Forms in Contemporary Sacred Architecture: Richard Meier and Steven Holl |
Daniel Ramirez: Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus, an Homage to Oliver Messiaen |
Avoda: Objects of the Spirit 鈥 Ceremonial Art by Tobi Kahn |
Tony Hooker: The Greater Good 鈥 An Artist's Contemporary View of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study |
Andy Warhol: Silver Clouds, an encore presentation |
Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds: A Fortieth Anniversary Celebration |
Lewis deSoto: Paranirvana |
Robert Farber: A Retrospective, 1985鈥1995 |
Bernard Maisner: Entrance to the Scriptorium |
Tobi Kahn: Metamorphoses |
MOCRA: The First Five Years |
Steven Heilmer: Pietre Sante | Holy Stones |
Utopia Body Paint Collection and Australian Aboriginal Art from St. Louis Collections |
Manfred Stumpf: Enter Jerusalem |
Frederick J. Brown: The Life of Christ Altarpiece |
Edward Boccia: Eye of the Painter |
Consecrations Revisited |
Keith Haring: Altarpiece 鈥 The Life of Christ |
Ian Friend: The Edge of Belief 鈥 paintings, sculpture, and works on paper, 1980鈥1994 |
Eleanor Dickinson: A Retrospective |
Post-Minimalism and the Spiritual: Four Chicago Artists |
Consecrations: The Spiritual in Art in the Time of AIDS |
Sanctuaries: Recovering the Holy in Contemporary Art, Part One |
Body and Soul: The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater |
Transformations: Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre |
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre |
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre |
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre |
Visible Conservation |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection: The Romero Cross |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Highlights from the MOCRA Collection |
Sanctuaries: Recovering the Holy in Contemporary Art, Part Two 鈥 Three Major Installations |
Beyond Words: Three Contemporary Artists and the Manuscript Tradition |
MOCRA: 25 |
Gary Logan: Elements |
Gratitude |
Surface to Source |
Quiet Isn't Always Peace |
Tom Kiefer: Pertenencias / Belongings |
Double Vision: Art from Jesuit University Collections |
Lesley Dill: Dream World of the Forest |
Jordan Eagles: VIRAL\VALUE |
This Road Is the Heart Opening: Selections from the MOCRA Collection |
Vicente Telles and Brandon Maldonado: Cuentos Nuevomexicanos |
Open Hands: Crafting the Spiritual |
Selections from the MOCRA Collection |