Jason Lujan: Utopian Aesthetic
14 September, 2023 - 28 January, 2024
Curated by Darryn Doull
Utopian Aesthetic addresses the process by which different cultures approach each other as a result of travel and communication. Sidestepping identity to focus on transnational experiences and aesthetics, the work relates the ways in which culture is exported and diffused into nations. The possibilities and limitations of the exchanging of ideas, meanings and values is centered while questioning concepts of authenticity and authorship. Lujan draws attention to transitive zones where processes of the unfamiliar become familiar, and the familiar becomes destabilized beyond expectation.
About the Artist
Jason Lujan is originally from Marfa, Texas, and lives in Toronto, ON. As an artist, he creates tools for understanding and interpreting the processes by which different cultures approach each other because of travel and communication. Largely integrating visual components of commercial and political design rooted in Asia and North America, the work focuses on the possibilities and limitations of the exchanging of ideas, meanings, and values, and questions the concepts of authorship and authenticity.
Lujan is an Assistant Professor at OCAD U and one of two artists behind Native Art Department International (NADI), a project in collaboration with Maria Hupfield. His work has exhibited at the University of Toronto Art Museum (ON), MOCA Toronto (ON), Mercer Union (ON), Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares (CDMX), Art Mur (QB), Museum of Contemporary Native Art (NM) , Five Myles Gallery (NY), Art Gallery of Guelph (ON), and the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum (FL). Professionally, Lujan has contributed to, planned, and managed exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Dia Art Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Park Avenue Armory. He is represented by MKG127 in Toronto.
