In Geoffrey Pugen‘s first exhibition at MKG127, he turns a reflexive eye toward the heterogeneous surfaces that assemble and constrain the artistic economy of body, self and object. Interweaving the silent movements of a fashionable gallerist with the robust installation of art objects, this two channel video narrativizes an accompanying installation, and explores the active dialectic between vision and gesture as a continual performance of self and group identity. Incorporating horror and the camp of David Bowie, the video, sculpture and adjacent walls coalesce into an uncanny, disjointed frame of experience, and the viewer becomes one of the reflective surfaces in an ongoing mystery.

Geoffrey Pugen explores relationships between real and staged performance, the natural and the artificial, and tensions of virtual identity through altering and manipulating images. Working with video, film, performance and photography, Pugen renders situations that examine our perceptions of how history, documentation and simulation intersect. His videos and art have been exhibited nationally and internationally. He is the recipient of the K.M Hunter Award for interdisciplinary art. Pugen’s work Images (2012) can be seen in the lightbox on the exterior of MKG127.