Members Exhibition Walkthrough Jaimie Warren: THE MIRACLE
Jaimie Warren and Gabriel Florenz, Pioneer Works Founding Artistic Director, invite our supporters to a private exhibition walkthrough of Warren’s large-scale exhibition THE MIRACLE.
RSVP by February 20 to samantha@pioneerworks.org
This event is open to members at all levels.
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About the exhibition
Jaimie Warren’s THE MIRACLE, the artist’s first institutional solo show in New York, is a DIY, oversized supernatural set for performance made up of animatronics, costumes, and special effects. Resembling a high school musical backdrop, a vintage Disney ride, or the campy gore of a community-built haunted house, it references iconic horror movies such as A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), B-movie camp extravaganzas, drag theater, and musical comedies.
More than any one narrative or reference, THE MIRACLE is an amalgamation of many, combined and reconstituted to disorienting, comical effect. Acting as artistic director, Warren solicited characters and ideas from collaborators of all ages during months of extensive workshops leading up to THE MIRACLE, THE MUSICAL. The workshops were held with artist peers and multiple Red Hook-based organizations, including Red Hook Art Project, Beam Center, and Cora Dance. Throwing her various participants’ ideas into the mix, Warren not only furthered THE MIRACLE’s nearly endless allusions but decentered her own authorship with the personal, pop cultural inventories of others. Synthesized into one collaborative masterwork, the exhibition’s title alludes to the miracle of collective art making while also nodding to Queen’s singular frontman Freddie Mercury, a recurring character in Warren’s practice.
Taken together, THE MIRACLE speaks to the power of cinema and pop culture to render, in larger than life form, the fears and insecurities of childhood. It engages the capacity of popular entertainment to bring people together around shared cultural touchstones, producing a show defined by both strangeness and joy.