Jeffrey Vallance
| Jeffrey Vallance | |
|---|---|
Vallance in audience with King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV of Tonga at the Royal Palace in Nuku’alofa, 1985.
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| Born |
Jeffrey Karl Reese Vallance January 25, 1955 Redondo Beach, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Art |
Jeffrey Karl Reese Vallance (born January 25, 1955 in Redondo Beach, California) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Best known for projects that blur the lines between object-making, installation, performance, curation and anthropological study.
Raised in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley during that region’s transformation from a mix of agricultural and suburban communities into one enormous expanse of strip malls and cookie-cutter houses, much of Vallance’s early work is informed by regional iconography and pop culture, including his parents’ fascination with Polynesian/Tiki imagery, and, later, his stepfather’s affection for President Richard M. Nixon.
Vallance received a BA in Art from California State University, Northridge, in 1979, and an MFA from the Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, in 1981.
Vallance is the leading force in a distinct version of Intervention Art called Infiltration Art. He creates art by interacting with real-world institutions, communities, politicians, religions, museums and pop-culture figures, tampering within bureaucratic structures to create change without creating conflict. His first public infiltration took place in 1977, when, dressed as a janitor, he sneaked into the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and exchanged the gallery wall-socket plates with his own hand-painted versions.
Vallance’s childhood involvement with his local Lutheran church inspired much of his later interest in and depictions of religious subjects. Young Vallance was also influenced by the morbid humor of The Addams Family and The Munsters television shows, and the feature films The Loved One, Harold and Maude and Mondo Cane (which he now describes as “a sick collection of imagery that warped my young mind”).
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