Jillian Mayer: Slumpies

A new site-specific artwork, 2024

Jillian Mayer’s Slumpies are a series of sculptures that position themselves as utilitarian objects. Slumpies acknowledge our ever-increasing relationship with technological devices, relieving us of the need to support our own bodies while we interface with the digital world. They are a solution to an endemic problem of our contemporary moment—the type of issue that can arise only in the context of a technologically driven, luxury-saturated, consumer-oriented marketplace. Mayer’s awkwardly rendered Slumpies, with their bulky shape and strange palette speckled with glitter, suggest a lack of conscientious design—an ad hoc solution made from simple materials that stands in direct contradiction to the sleek forms and designs, and the marketing culture, that defines our intimate dependence on technology.

-Jillian Mayer

Jillian Mayer (b. 1974, Miami, FL), received her BFA from Florida International University in 2007. Mayer has had solo exhibitions at Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT and Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL. She has participated in global exhibitions at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Miami, FL; Girls’ Club Collection, Fort Lauderdale, FL; 2014 La Biennale de Montreal, Montreal, QC; Miami Dade College’s Museum of Art + Design, Miami, FL; Young Art Museum, Davie, FL; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; National Center for Contemporary Art, Russia among others. In 2010, the artist’s work was one of the 25 selections for the Guggenheim’s Youtube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video. As part of the Guggenheim’s Creative Video Biennial, the artist’s work was exhibited at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain; and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, Germany. Recent exhibitions include “Past Skin” at MoMA P.S.1 as well as solo exhibitions “Slumpies” at Perez Art Museum, Miami; The Occasional at LAX Art, Los Angeles; and Salt 9: Jillian Mayer at Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City. Mayer’s work is a part of important public and private collections, including the Perez Art Museum, Miami and The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami. Mayer lives in Miami and is represented by David Castillo Gallery.