Like so many curators, Jade Dellinger moves behind the scenes, conceiving and — sometimes literally — constructing great exhibits, then carefully sidestepping the limelight as it shines on artists. You may not know his name, but chances are you've enjoyed the fruits of his labor: most recently, last year's Keith Haring show at the Tampa Museum of Art.
His latest endeavor opens Friday at the TMA: an exhibition of work by The Art Guys, Houston duo Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing, known for wacky performance pieces that nestle a hard nut of social commentary within a candy coating of humor. The museum show is a small retrospective of the pair's 25-year-career — including mock business cards, ironic self-promotional materials and the like — based around the idea of self-portraiture. The theme is "a bit of a joke," says Dellinger, because the artists never actually portray themselves in their work; they use "The Art Guys" as a kind of brand to satirize pop culture and commercialism.
Extending the double-ness of it all is the project's other half: a new, specially-commissioned installation that will light up Flight 19, and an elaborate opening night party that promises to bring outrageous fun to downtown Tampa.
Dellinger, 39, grew up in Lutz and studied art history at USF, then went on to earn a master's degree in arts administration at NYU and collaborate with the rising art stars of his generation while living in New York City in the 1990s. Today, the Carrollwood resident calls the Bay area home when he's not collaborating with artists and institutions all over the world.
Last week, Jade and I met for a beer at the New World to discuss the exhibit and his decade-long relationship with The Art Guys.
So, you just got back from your road trip with the Art Guys …
I did!… I went to Houston on Saturday… Because we're working on a rather limited budget with this show, and because I thought it was important to bring this particular piece by The Art Guys, which is called "The giant Art Guys" — it's literally this really ridiculously funny, silly, roadside attraction kind of something; they're portraits of The Art Guys, one is 16 feet and one is 17 feet high, and they actually are now up in front of the museum — that would have just been cost-prohibitive unless we sort of, Little Rascals [style], threw it all in the back of the truck and drove it ourselves.
How did you meet them?
I did a project in Zing Magazine, a quarterly that's based in New York. They invite curators to do what they want with as many pages as you want. I took 10 or 12 pages, and I invited artists to have half-page advertisements. It couldn't be about promoting an exhibit, it had to be about services — it was called "Ad On Exchange."
At this point, The Art Guys had just been in a show at the New Museum in New York. … so I invited them to be in this project, and they designed a half-page ad. Their thing was to set up The Art Guys, Inc. laundry services, and they put their address, and it was like $5 per item, and they paid for the shipping back. You could send your dirty laundry, and they would clean and press and actually tag it as art.
We had a really great exchange. So then, when Margaret Miller [director of USF Contemporary Art Museum and Graphicstudio] and I were in Europe in the summer of '97, she was really interested in this idea of trying to propose a millennial project, and that's when Art in the News happened. In January of 1999, we convinced the Tampa Tribune to give us $180,000 of advertising space, basically. The city gave us a $50,000 grant, and the Tampa Museum [of Art] was a full participant. We invited William Wegman. … Matthew Barney, Moriko Mori, Allan McCollum … and Lorna Simpson [to create pieces of art in the newspaper's ad space].
At that moment, The Art Guys were beginning their Suits Project. … They were watching NASCAR, and they see that all the cars are covered in advertising, and the drivers are covered in advertising, and they were like, "Why shouldn't artists be sponsored by major corporations? Why is what we do less valuable or less entertaining?"
So they had this idea of getting sponsorship. … and they went to Todd Oldham, the major New York fashion designer, and asked him to design these suits. And then they simultaneously approached Chiat/Day. … one of the biggest advertising firms in the world. Chiat/Day set up all these meetings with all of the corporations with whom they'd worked, you know, Krispy Kreme, Budweiser and on and on. The idea was that they would literally be selling advertising [on the suits], and the trade-off was that these guys were going to live their lives as publicly as possible for an entire year.
So I thought, we'll bring The Art Guys in, they'll design a page [for Art in the News], and we'll make a project around the suits while they're in town, and that's what we did. The Weekly Planet [now Creative Loafing] played along — they did a cover of them with the suits — and of course, their piece ran in the Tribune. …and ultimately, [publisher Harry N.] Abrams put out a book documenting [the Suits Project].
All of this occurred, and then it went away because it was a performance-based bit, and I really liked the idea of revisiting that and inviting them to do an exhibition.
So the exhibit is part retrospective, part new work?
Precisely… In conversation with Joe [Griffith] and the folks at Flight 19, Paul Wilborn with Creative Industries and Ken Rollins from the Tampa Museum, we were really interested in the idea of helping to support and encourage the activity of Flight 19. And it was really a unique and interesting possibility to be able to curate an exhibition that is a solo thematic show that's a survey and that does indeed include some new work, but then simultaneously to commission a new work that is thought of site-specifically and which really was inspired by the context — the idea that you're in the baggage claim of an old train station.
So [at Flight 19] they'll have this very large-scale work. It's the largest piece that [The Art Guys] have made from suitcases. For quite some time, they have done these illuminated suitcases with words cut out, and occasionally they've done sculptural forms. The way that this has been done and, frankly, the only way in which it would have been possible, is that the collective of artists [at Flight 19] are involved in the fabrication of this work, based on explicit directions and instruction and prototypes being sent and visits from Jack.
With the opening night party, you'll try to draw people to Flight 19?
It will really go both ways. Art After Dark is the 8-to-11 o'clock thing, which has a band and all of that. Because the title of the show is Seeing Double, they decided that it would be fun if people dressed alike as couples, they'd give two-for-one admission for Art After Dark. Then, from 10 o'clock so that there's a bit of an overlap, we hope that people will make their way back and forth and/or down Zack [Street] to Flight 19. And Flight 19 will do what is to be the opening of the Valise Voyage exhibition and the afterparty for Art After Dark with a doppelganger contest.
Do you have your twin lined up already?
I don't have mine lined up, no. But the cool thing, actually, that we learned today … the Flight 19 folks were going to fashion a trophy, and today I learned that The Art Guys are going to make the trophy. So I hope that will inspire people [to dress up], because it's probably, you know, a $10,000 trophy. … and it'll be really quirky. It'll be really interesting, I'm sure.
This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2007.