With deadpan, wry observations on human relations, personal ambitions and failures, and the banalities of the mediated present, the work of Trevor Shimizu is suffused with references to 20th century artistic traditions. Shimizu’s paintings, drawings, and more recent video works in his current exhibition Trevor Shimizu: Performance Artist pay homage to and poke fun at various conceptions of the role of the artist in society: as hero, provocateur, and performer.

This selection of films draws from the catalogue of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), where Shimizu worked as Technical Assistant and later Technical Director from 2005-2012. In citing the role that artists such as Dan Graham, Carolee Schneemann, Mike Kelley, and Paul McCarthy have had on his own trajectory as an artist, Shimizu opens up space to consider and question the nature of artistic influence.

Support

Programming at ICA has been made possible in part by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts and the Lise Spiegel Wilks and Jeffrey Wilks Family Foundation, and by Hilarie L. & Mitchell Morgan.