Jason Lujan | Expanded Dreaming

Jason Lujan | Expanded Dreaming
August 2 – September 14, 2024

Opening reception: Friday, August 2nd, 2024, from 5:00 – 9:00 pm
Artist Talk and Livestream: Saturday, August 3rd from 1:00 – 2:00 pm

Expanded Dreaming features artwork that integrates Indigenous sensibilities in tandem with transnational experiences and aesthetics. Central to this exhibition is the notion of the travelling pilgrim, wandering mendicant, and the metaphor of open-air market as the dominant aesthetic. In collecting goods and people from around the world, capitalism itself has the characteristics of an assemblage. Just as previous generations of Indigenous artists responded to the introduction of modern art-making materials such as synthetic paint to record, recode, and reframe traditional ideas and put forth new ideas, the art in this exhibition emphasizes transitive zones involving the processes of the unfamiliar becoming familiar, or the process of restoration becoming a creative endeavour.

Jason Lujan

Jason Lujan is originally from Marfa, Texas. He brings the experience of a 20 year career as an artist and arts administrator in New York City managing departments with the Dia Foundation, Museum of Modern Art, United Nations, Park Avenue Armory, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jason has contributed to, planned, constructed, and managed productions and exhibitions by Ryoji Ikeda; Royal Shakespeare Company; Tom Sachs; Merce Cunningham; Janet Cardiff; Ann Hamilton; Paul McCarthy; Marina Abramovic; Douglas Gordon; Martin Creed; Taryn Simon; Herzog & DeMueron; Ai Wei Wei; The Met’s Costume Institute Ball; Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection; Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Church; Camp: Notes on Fashion, and more.

Associated projects involve assisting with fashion runway installations for Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Tommy Hilfiger, Marc Jacobs, and Y3, among others.
As an artist, he creates tools for understanding and interpreting the processes by which different cultures approach each other as a result of travel and communication. Largely integrating visual components rooted in North America and Asia, the work focuses on the possibilities and limitations of the exchanging of ideas, meanings, and values, questioning the concepts of authorship and authenticity. Jason is represented by Toronto galleries MKG127 and, as the collaborative project Native Art Department International, by Patel Brown.