Jeffu Warmouth

Publications

2020

Mark Favermann, Digital Media - Public Art Is a Bridge to Our New Normal, The Arts Fuse, Sep 17, 2020

Emily Hood & Joe Fusaro, The Visual Experience, Davis Publications, 4th edition, 2020

Greg Cook, Jeffu Warmouth's Giant Inflated Head Stuffed With Ideas, Daily Concerns, Neuroses, Wonderland, Jan 17, 2020

The centerpiece of Jeffu Warmouth's exhibition "Urgent Blowout," at Boston Sculptors Gallery, is the Groton sculptor's funny, freaky self-portrait. It's a surreal 3D photographic scan of his head, from the bottom of his curly mustache to just above his eyebrows, turned into a 10-foot-wide and nearly 6-foot-tall inflated fabric sculpture. (You can hear the hum of the blower.) It has something of that uncanny feel of a digital image that has been rendered into an object with which you not exactly comfortably share the room. The top of the head is hollowed out so that it serves as a bowl holding three dozen smaller photographic self-portraits printed on inflated fabric heads that feel a bit like balloons--this time the full head, a bit over life-size at 17 inches tall. Each has a different expression--eyes wide or squinting, smiling or scowling, mischievous or pained, as he mugs for the camera. Some of the smaller ones are hung on the nearby wall, a bit like punching bags. "Urgent Blowout" can feel like a cartoon of bubbling thoughts and delights and anxieties overflowing from one's head. From another angle, it can look as if the big head's brains have been scooped out, turning it into a bowl with all these little Jeffu heads poured in. It begins goofy and slowly becomes unsettling.

2019

Cate McQuaid, At Boston Sculptors Gallery, two very different takes on instability, The Boston Globe, Dec 19, 2019

Warmouth has always fueled his videos, sculptures, and installation work with broad, self-referential comedy. All of that Jeffu can be off-putting unless you realize his art wrestles with the nattering ego. Here, that ego is downright inflatable. At the center of "Urgent Blowout" sits a 10-foot wide inflatable coffee cup in the shape of his Warmouth's face: eyes, nose, and trademark handlebar mustache. Dozens of fabric Jeffu heads -- the stuff of punching bags -- fill the cup. In a video, the balls endlessly topple into the cup, until a giant Jeffu ball comes down on the rest, and they all vanish. Maybe this is what happens when your head just gets too big.

Emily Bass, Top 10 Exhibitions of 2019, Dec 31, 2019

Urgent Blowout is a provocative investigation of the ego in contemporary culture. Inflated reproductions of the artist's head are produced in excess and commoditized (each of the emoting heads can be purchased for $500). Warmouth is no Kardashian--his image is not blurred to perfection like Kim's, rather, blemishes and hairs are captured in high-def--yet his works evoke the very principles that define reality TV and social media. He performs exaggerated displays of emotion (the faces range from Skeptic to Supergrump) and presents them en masse; we are privy to these heightened expressions, yet when viewed together, they do not create a complete portrait of the artist. We see the man's image, yet we do not know anything about him. Warmouth's examinations of self-image don't come off contrarian or better-than-thou (Most popular discourse about the ego and social media begs an eye roll and an "Okay Boomer"). Instead, his larger-than-life installations feel playful and comical. Warmouth tackles complicated topics with levity, inviting engagement rather than alienation or shame.

2017

Louis Kaplan, Photography and Humour, Reaktion Books, 2017

For Warmouth, 'Jewish humor has always been concerned with subverting logic, language, identity, and generally turning things on their head,' and he brings that sensibility to his photomontage practice. He continues: 'Most of the profoundly funny material that really makes me laugh and think at the same time comes out of this tradition.' But the funniest and most incongruous thing to learn about this artist is that he is not actually Jewish. Turning things on their head, Warmouth confounds our expectations of his identity. This extra layer of irony leaves him in an appropriately uncomfortable situation of comic ambivalence. On the one hand, his photographic humour opens him up to the charge that he is making fun of Jewish people, therefore putting him at risk of being considered anti- Semitic. On the other hand, this postmodern artist illustrates the conversancy with and affirmation of Jewish humour that informs his entire creative practice, but that does not rely on Jewish belonging or the fixing of his own identity.

Space, Prix Pictet, teNeues Press

Louis Kaplan, The Power of Jewish Photographic Humor to Illuminate Dark Times, Forward, Feb 12, 2017

Jeffu Warmouth's grotesquely delectable Bagel Belly, below, addresses the close linkage of Jewish identity and humor. Here, the photo artist has some fun with one of the culture's gastronomic icons. There is also a good dose of self-mockery in Bagel Belly, as we see the artist making fun of his own protruding paunch. Nevertheless, this decidedly Jewish humor is taken for a twist when we learn that the artist is not actually Jewish. Instead, he is a practicing Jewish humorist - that is someone who has soaked up this quality that binds American Jewish identity and who has done so from the "outside in."

2016

Daryl Goh, KLEX offers a broad taste of contemporary arts, Star2, Nov 24, 2016

American conceptual artist Jeffu Warmouths work Fluid Bodies. His works often ask the viewers to unravel their relationships to language, identity, and culture.

Multimedia Artist Jeffu Warmouth to perform at Fitchburg State, Worcester Telegram, Mar 24, 2016

Multimedia artist Jeff Warmouth blends art and humor. Inspired by the Marx Brothers and co-creator of the movie Day of the Cabbage (about a cabbage hurtling to Earth), his contemporary takes on society can also be thought provoking.

2015

Future and Behind, exhibition catalogue, Con-Temporary Art Observatorium, Venice, Italy

The dehumanisation born with the computer era is the subject of Fluid Bodies by Jeffu Warmouth, who chooses to mitigate the drama of electronic dystopia with a sarcastic sense of humour: the human being becomes a BLOB, the sprite of video-games from the 80s, enclosed into a world of pointless dares and dangers of which you can not see the aim.

Leandro Ceruti, Maquinas e ideas: el gobierno del arte futuro, Perfil, Sep 9, 2015

"Technology allows art to relate to viewers using the range of expression of contemporary society. It is not enough to look and interpret the world; we artists can (and must) communicate with our audience using the tools of our world" says Jeffu Warmouth, American who will participate in this new edition with the installation JeffuBurger, an interactive stand to order fast food that awakens unique behaviors in the employee of the screen. "Visitors of all ages are generally delighted to 'place orders' on the touch screen. People laugh, and also think critically because they recognize the satire of consumer culture, which is seen in the videos," says Jeffu.

Artworks Episode 329, Maryland Public Television, June 25, 2015

Michael Hartwell, "Fitchburg State, Fitchburg Art Museum ink collaboration", Sentinel & Enterprise, Apr 29, 2015

Over the past two years the two institutions have been sharing resources and collaborating on projects while developing the formal agreement. For example, FAM did an exhibit of the work of FSU faculty member Jeffu Warmouth and FSU students worked in the background on the exhibit, creating branding and design elements to tie the exhibit together.

402: Jeffu Warmouth, WEDU-TV, Tampa, FL, Feb 12, 2015

Michael Hartwell, Fitchburg State gamers hit the 'Penny Arcade', Sentinel & Enterprise, Mar 10, 2014

2014

Jeffu Warmouth: NO MORE FUNNY STUFF exhibition catalogue, Fitchburg Art Museum

Jeffu Warmouth: NO MORE FUNNY STUFF is not just an exhibition title: it is a bold, multilayered proclamation. In the context of Warmouth's sprawling mid-career retrospective at the Fitchburg Art Museum, NO MORE FUNNY STUFF is a preamble to the absurdity, humor, and parody that inform Warmouth's work. It is a clever nod to homage and word play, coupling and juxtaposition. It is a subversive claim that contemporary art doesn't have to be square, and that there is room for both fun and funny stuff in an art world prone to taking itself too seriously. Jeffu Warmouth: NO MORE FUNNY STUFF presents together for the first time an expansive range of the artist's work. It spans over twenty years of creative output and highlights key conceptual threads and themes within Warmouth's larger practice.

ARTWORKS, WHYY-TV, Philadelphia

ArtBeat Nation, PBS Eight, Arizona State University, Sep 14, 2014

ARTIFEX, WCNY-TV, Syracuse, NY, Aug 1, 2014

SPECTRUM, Season 2, Episode 38, KPBS-TV, San Diego, CA, Jul 19, 2014

Cover, Special Museums Issue, Art New England, May/June 2014

Greta Kuriger Suiter, Fitchburg Art Museum, Art & Archives, June 7, 2014

Some highlights for me included an installation of competing fast food chains JeffuBurger and JFC. At JeffuBurger I ordered the Massachusetts burger which consisted of a meat patty shaped like the state, topped with baked beans, cranberry sauce, and Boston creme. I then got to watch Jeffu take a bite. Taking up a whole wall was a grocery store installation of boxes and cans, each with a custom label featuring a pun or abstract idea. There was much to read and look at here, and even later I find enjoyment in ones that I missed at first.

Nick Mallard, "Fitchburg art exhibit is blooming", Sentinel & Enterprise, May 5, 2014

The Fitchburg Art Museum's Art in Bloom 2014 exhibit is simply art inspired by art. The event saw flower arrangements inspired by and reflecting works of art throughout the museum's exhibits, including its Egyptian display and Jeffu Warmouth's No More Funny Stuff collection. Prizes were awarded for several of the pieces, including the Best in Show award to second-grader Patrick McWalter of Reingold Elementary School for his interpretation of Warmouth's Kung Fu Kitchen short film.

Milva DiDomizio, Art on the Marquee Hosts Next Generation of Media Artists, The Boston Globe, Apr 28, 2014

Margaret Weigel, Fuse Review: Digital Game Shorts for Now People, The Arts Fuse, Mar 30, 2014

My two favorite entries manage to use the vertical space extremely well as well as cram whimsy and meaning into a short frame of time. Jeffu Warmouth's Human Testbrix interprets the classic game of Tetris, but with Warmouth himself representing the bricks. Images of Warmouth in color-coded outfits and different positions fall from above and immediately click into a self-organizing pattern, creating a portrait of a life as an accumulation of selves.

Steve Annear, Video Game Art Will Take Over the Convention Center, Boston Magazine, Mar 17, 2014

Other concepts include Human Testbrix, by Jeffu Warmouth, which depicts human bodies taking the form of Tetris blocks as they fall from the top of the marquee and fit together.

Jenna Pitcher, Art on the Marquee flaunts game-inspired art on 80-foot-tall screen, Polygon, Mar 13, 2014

Jeffu Warmouth's Human Testbrix features a game of Tetris where the blocks are replaced by human bodies.

Jay Sugarman, Museum Open House: Fitchburg Art Museum, NewTV, Newton, MA

Cate McQuaid, Bringing the Funny, Cate McQuaid Blog, Mar 5, 2014

Cate McQuaid, From comic to compelling: Nothing fusty about Warmouth exhibition at Fitchburg Art Museum, The Boston Globe, Feb 28, 2014

The most affecting work, unreservedly, is the most recent. Warmouth leaves food behind and makes himself an everyman. In Fall, several versions of him plummet through a cloud-filled sky, like Yves Klein's photomontage Leap Into the Void, and Don Draper's silhouette in the opening credits of Mad Men, landing in a pool of limpid blue water, where they swim. 1UP riffs on old arcade video games, with little Jeffus scrambling up ladders and jumping over precipices. Pac-Man's plight - and by implication, Warmouth's and our own - is life as an endless round of pursuit, consumption, peril, and destruction. He sets up an equally vexing dynamic in the three­channel video projection Merge. Again, several Jeffus appear. When two in the same costume show up, they jump at each other and become one. It might be a metaphor for any relationship, most poignantly an internal one. The resulting figure struggles, stretching and morphing like a reflection in a funhouse mirror, but never looks quite right.

Fitchburg Art Museum Strives To Spark Economic Growth, WGBH News, Feb 25, 2014

Nancye Tuttle, ATHM Exhibits celebrate Lowell and its textile workers, Lowell Sun, Feb 17, 2014

Sebastian Smee, The ticket: art, The Boston Globe, Feb 15, 2014

Jared Bowen, Jeffu Warmouth, Truth to Power Festival, and more, WGBH-TV, Feb 14, 2014

Lynne Hedvig, No More Funny Stuff, Worcester Magazine, Feb 13, 2014

Jeffu has used humor as a means to approach and analyze many issues that touch on the political, with particular reflection on living in a world of overmediation and consumer culture. With works like two of his early devices, Oven Antics, a series of videos of convoluted food attached to an oven containing a television set, and TV Dinner, a massive fork and knife hovering over a plate of television and videotape, Jeffu makes a heated assessment of our infatuation and dependence on television as well as our general American confusion about food and resultant relationship with curiously processed goods. Likewise, JFC, Il Jeffuria Pizza and JeffuBurger are large interactive video installations that include familiar fast food facades and invite viewers to select oddly distorted foods. Jeffu uses the viewer's existent understanding of fast food culture as a language to engage in a comical, yet serious discussion about the state of our consumption, both in terms of food and packaged purchasing. There is something unique in Jeffu's approach to these widely-incorporated themes; absent is a perpetrator, finger-pointing or judgment. In its place are just animated faces and silly entrees.

Andrea Shea, Lofty Goals To Rebrand Fitchburg Art Museum, The ARTery, WBUR 90.9 FM, Feb 11, 2014

Cillea Houghton, FSU prof gets down to (funny) business, Sentinel & Enterprise, Feb 10, 2014

"There are a lot of ideas in play, but play itself embodies a lot of ideas," Warmouth said. "A work that isn't about humor is still playful." Tinti also attested to the depth of Warmouth's pieces. "His work is really layered; it's seriously funny," she said. "The work allows visitors to step back from their daily lives and not take their routines so seriously." Capasso echoed Tinti's sentiments: "The show is huge fun. Jeff's work is accessible, hysterical, and meaningful; they're not just jokes," he said, adding that themes explored in the various works range from consumerism to boredom.

Cillea Houghton, Fitchburg State student reflects on helping design 'Funny' exhibition at museum, Sentinel & Enterprise, Feb 10, 2014

From a behind-the-scenes blog featuring student perceptions of the experience, to a Jeffu-themed coupon book, among many others, we collectively put our heart and souls into the project to help connect Warmouth's work to the audience. From the perspective of a student involved with this comprehensive project, I can attest to how unique it is. This collaboration is the first of its kind between the two institutions and resulted in a highly positive outcome.

'No More Funny Stuff' art show opens Feb. 9 in Fitchburg, Worcester Telegram, Feb 6, 2014

"The Jeffu Warmouth exhibition is the first major step toward developing an integral relationship between the Fitchburg Art Museum and Fitchburg State University," said FAM Director Nicholas Capasso. "Our mutual desire is to have FAM become the de facto art museum for Fitchburg State, so that we can both better serve the audience, the students, and the community."

Fitchburg State, Fitchburg Art Museum collaborate on Jeffu Warmouth exhibit, Fitchburg State University News, Feb 4, 2014

Go & See: Tuesday 4 - Monday 10 February, Big Red & Shiny, Feb 17, 2014

Sebastian Smee, Critic's pick: Visual art, Boston Globe, Feb 1, 2014

JEFFU WARMOUTH: NO MORE FUNNY STUFF A midcareer retrospective of the Massachusetts artist, who favors parody, puns, and absurdist humor.

Kristy Stevenson, A new precedent at FSU, The Point at Fitchburg State, Jan 30, 2014

Kathryn Roy, Favorite Places: Fitchburg Art Museum, MassLive / The Republican, Jan 9, 2014

Mark Lynch, Fitchburg Art Musem - Jeffu Warmouth: No More Funny Stuff, Inquiry, WICN 90.5 FM, Jan 8, 2014

Fitchburg Art Museum Presents, Facebook Page

A Look Behind the Scenes of 'NO MORE FUNNY STUFF', blog, Jan - June 2014

2013

Jon Krasner, Motion Graphic Design: Applied History and Aesthetics, Third Edition, Focal Press, 2013

Interactive media artist Jeffu Warmouth created a poetic video entitled Fall that portrayed multiple iterations of himself free-falling through the sky and landing in a pool of water. The figure's vertical descent, followed by the horizontal trajectory of him swimming around the sign, cleverly considers the juxtaposing vertical and horizontal screens of the marquee.

Cate McQuaid, Fresh paint, fresh ideas at Fitchburg Art Museum, The Boston Globe, Oct 19, 2013

Next up: a solo show for performance and video artist Jeffu Warmouth, a professor at Fitchburg State University. Tinti calls him "Fitchburg's most famous contemporary artist." His work rides on humor that can be snarky and sweet; it's more provocative than a still life. "We're trying to blow the dust out, and Jeffu will be a big help," Tinti says.

P J Carmichael, No more funny stuff!, The Point at Fitchburg State, Nov 9, 2013

Cate McQuaid, At the Quarry, catemcquaid.com, Sep 10, 2013

On the ticket over the weekend: Performance artist Marilyn Arsem, composer and clarinetist Evan Ziporyn, sound artist Jed Speare, and Jeffu Warmouth, pictured above in a still from his performance video Three Heads are Better than One.

Cate McQuaid, At the Quarry, a groundbreaking festival, The Boston Globe, Sep 5, 2013

Jeffu Warmouth and Ellen Wetmore will screen their comic performance videos in the Red Box gallery throughout the festival. They also intend to perform. "I'm building a live performance in 'trialogue' with two video instances of myself," Warmouth says. Wetmore, who is his wife, will perform on a swing.

Cate McQuaid, Gaming culture inspires videos on convention center marquee, The Boston Globe, March 19, 2013

Jeffu Warmouth's funny, existential 1UP pays homage to old arcade games, but here the protagonist is a man, not a Pacman, desperately scrambling through endless tests.

Ira Cantor, Pax East Goes for Big Game, The Boston Herald, March 17, 2013

Jeffu Warmouth's 1UP shows a self-inspired character "moving through a shifting set of game environments drawn from the Golden Age of arcade games." Warmouth spent about 100 hours creating his video, which recalls scenes from the classic 8-bit games Donkey Kong, Joust and Dig Dug. "I've done a lot of work about pop culture, and I've always been interested in venues that are not white gallery space," said Warmouth, who has made two previous videos for the BCEC marquee. "There's something great about the marquee being in the public space where people are not expecting art. Definitely, it's expanded my audience."

2012

Margaret Weigel, COLLISION18 - The Expanding Range of Cyberarts, The Arts Fuse, Nov 17, 2012

Of note is Marginalia: Crawl by Jeffu Warmouth, in which images of two men crawl on their hands and knees along the length of vinyl window blinds mounted on the wall. While this work technically falls under the rubric of video art, the artist's clever reconfiguring of the projection screen transforms it into something fresh. The author's note suggests that the installation explores the body's relationship with "marginal aspects of our environments," but I read it in more existential terms as an image of man struggling against restrictions of all stripes.

Jared Bowen, Public Display of Reflection, WGBH-TV, Aug 1, 2012

Geoff Edgers, How Boston Cyberarts grew into a year-round creativity beacon, The Boston Globe, July 1, 2012

The "Art on the Marquee" project has offered exposure to a range of artists, including Ellen Wetmore, Jeffu Warmouth, and Kawandeep Singh Virdee, and will continue to introduce others during future waves.

Cate McQuaid, 'Art on the Marquee' inspires and challenges, The Boston Globe, March 22, 2012

There are seven videos in all, and three sport jumping or falling motifs, no doubt inspired by the 80-foot-tall screens. Of these, Jeffu Warmouth's Fall is the most poetic. Warmouth fills the vertical screens with blue skies and puffball clouds. Men fall through the sky, unnervingly conjuring Sept. 11, although they move more slowly than they would in real life. Warmouth has made the horizontal screen below into a swimming pool, also very blue. The men end up paddling around underwater, from one side of the marquee to the next. It's a sweet, reassuring ending. This is just the first round of "Art on the Marquee," and there's much to enjoy about it. Still, here's hoping that the longer the program goes on, the more artists will master its particular oddities, the way Virdee and Warmouth have.

Cate McQuaid, Screen dream, or nightmare, CateMcQuaid.com, March 22, 2012

Jeffu Warmouth's Fall, is one of the best, especially in its witty use of the awkward configuration of the marquee. Men drop through the sky on the vertical screen, a little slower than they would in real life, and when they hit the horizontal screen, they're landing in a deep pool of water. They start swimming.

Mary M. Tinti, Art on the Marquee, Dress for Sports, March 9, 2012

Earlier this evening, I encountered the most smile-inducing surprise on my drive home from work... It's a wonderful project entitled Fall by Jeffu Warmouth, and a fun and fanciful use of the juxtaposing vertical and horizontal screens that comprise the marquee. I found out later that the figures are actually portraits of the artist who free-fall through a cloud-dotted sky (on the marquee's y axis) only to change their trajectory and swim around the sign (once they hit the x axis). At the end of a long day, at the end of a long week, this digital short could not have been more refreshing. For me, it was a signal that the weekend was here and I could let all the millions of tasks on my piles of lists fall away just like the man on that screen, and prepare to be reinvigorated by whatever I chose to dive into over the next 48 hours.

Bill Shaner, Phantasma: Art on the Marquee, Dig Boston, Feb 27, 2012

Lisa DeCanio, Boston's Latest Public Art Display Can Be Spotted From a Half Mile Away, BostInno.com, Feb 23, 2012

Matthew Reed Baker, Want to Tour Boston's Biggest Art Gallery?, Boston Magazine, Feb 17, 2012

Max Eternity, Art on the Marquee debuts in Boston, Art Digital Magazine, Feb 15, 2012

Marie Szaniszlo, Convention center marquee to showcase local artists, Boston Herald, Feb 13, 2012

Thomas Grillo, Convention center launches marquee art, Boston Business Journal, Feb 13, 2012

2011

Matthew Nash, Jeffu Food Court, ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art, Volume 17: Hi-Tech, DVD

Jeffu Food Court is about food in the same way that The Daily Show is about news -- they are looking at forms that carry elaborate layers of meta-information that, when explored, tell us more about our relationship to media and its role in creating experiences -- hopes, dreams, desires, dislikes, and constructions of the world around us -- than we will ever find in the content itself. A hamburger tells me nothing about myself, a JeffuBurger is a window into a long history of media, and my ingestion of it since birth, that makes my consumption of a burger a complex cultural decision that, were it not for media, I would make only after asking a lot of questions. That I conclude to eat a burger, especially a certain branded kind of burger from McDonalds or Burger King or UBurger, or a homemade organic burger from a farm co-op, or a veggie burger, or no burger at all -- all those decisions tell more about my current cultural disposition and relationship to media that I'm probably willing to admit. Each of those decisions requires asking questions of myself, some far more complex and loaded with personal and cultural contradictions than I want to deal with every time I'm hungry. -- Matthew Nash

New Media Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Huret & Spector Gallery, Emerson College, 2011

Playing at the edges of the domestic living space, Jeffu Warmouth's video Marginalia depicts several small "Jeffu" figures crawling through the built environment like ants with no known agenda, leaving us to parse the meaning of their labor. - Ellen Wetmore, curator
A figure with a faint hint of his shadow crawls across the surface in a loop like pattern and is joined by more that look like him till an assembly line of bodies in repetitive motion is created. These are bodies caught in the agony of a routine of seeking meaning through window like structures of what can be read as hyper mediated environments where the flow of information is pervasive and yet invisible. In drawing attention to the oppressiveness of the cybernetic loop of video mediated image, mind and body, Marginalia offers a material critique of navigating mediated environments and the process of meaning making from within the multitudinous flow of information in the everyday. - Ambarien al Qadar, respondent

Greg Cook, Balancing act: tech and art, The Providence Phoenix, Sep 27, 2011

Il Jeffuria Pizza, an interactive video installation by Jeffu Warmouth of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, offers a touch-screen menu of pizzas that prompt video of a life-sized Warmouth in a chef's hat to act out wacky orders. Order "Baseball Pizza" and he swings a rolling pin at balls of dough thrown his way; order "UFO Pizza" and a pie floats down (on very visible wires) for Warmouth to add pepperoni and cheese. It's lite comedy in the tradition of silent film comedians, William Wegman, and Sesame Street.

Michael J. Fressola, The Art Market, Staten Island Advance, Sep 18, 2011

Warmouth is well aware that humor and fine art are a risky combination. He's given the matter some thought. "Yes there is the risk that people will not take the work seriously," he says. "On the other hand, it is precisely the fact that people do not take humor seriously, do not regard humor as capable of addressing serious issues or of having the same merits as work dealing with more canonical art issues (composition, formalist issues, beauty, etc.) that is its strength.
"Humor," he added, "allows subversion, allows things to fly under the radar, allows critique of institutions, social identity, philosophy and practices that often cannot be effectively criticized directly. I would say that other forms of humor do the same, from MAD to Louis CK."

{ON THE WALL} Museum Exhibits / Art Galleries, Advance Weekly Entertainment, Sep 8, 2011

Is SHOW gallery turning into some sort of warped bodega or burger joint? Or is it just the inspired work of Boston artist Jeffu Warmouth?

Tim Smith, Current Space's art market — literally, The Baltimore Sun, Aug 4, 2011

One shelf is loaded with standard-sized vegetable cans by Massachusetts artist Jeffu Warmouth. The colorfully detailed labels on this line of $9.99 products promises some decidedly off-the-beaten-path taste sensations: "Bartlett Ears," "Pure Drained Self-Esteem," "Rolled Eyeballs," and "Forked Tongue." There's even a can marked "Hair," which ought to be a big seller.

2010

Robert Hirsch, Exploring Color Photography: From Film to Pixels

John Michael Kohler Arts Center Newsletter, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sep/Oct 2010

Walk through Jeffu Warmouth's "self-portrait" manifested as a row of canned goods in SuperJeffuMarket. These and other artists push the envelope of humor through irreverent works or employ timeless comedic devices such as political satire, physical comedy, and wordplay.

Nancye Tuttle, "Young Talent is Already In Bloom," Lowell Sun, Feb 25, 2010

FOOD FOR FUN: Jeffu Warmouth, a humorist-artist, playfully explores the fragmentation of identity in the age of fast food in his new installation Food Court, running March 1-April 2 in the University Gallery at UMass Lowell. Warmouth's installations include the Jeffuburger, a video projection with an interactive touch-screen production, along with a set designed to resemble a fast food counter. "My work is fueled by irony and paradox," he says in his artist's statement. "I emphasize language and jokes over pure visual experience, creating meaning in the gap between images and text."

2009

Mindaugas Kavaliauskas, KAUNAS PHOTO RECYCLED 09: Nine Lessons of Photography, exhibition catalogue, Kaunas, Lithuania, 2009

Create a heroic narrative: It might seem that still life is a very down-to-earth genre. Here we will see that the genre can contain also high flights or even entire space odysseys. Who said that potatoes cannot fly to outer space (oh..., sorry, spice...)?.. Orbital stations of potatoes, stars of salt on dark table surface, a lunar pan-cake or a mellon of earth can all make it guided by your fantasy and seen through your lens will rise higher than earth and sky. Strange, as it may seem, but products, given by this earth can fly into outer space. Instill action in still life, and make the still life dynamic. Compose these still life pictures next to each other and create heroic stories.

Paula Owen, Creativity of FSC Faculty Showcased, Worcester Telegram, Dec 24, 2009

JeffuBurger was originally shown in April at the Boston Cyberarts Festival and was also displayed this year at a show at the Art Institute of Boston. "In our super-modern culture, we're plugged in constantly," said Mr. Warmouth. "Fast-food workers punch your order on a menu screen, and you don't have to interact with them anymore. The way beef is grown to become a hamburger would not be possible without 21st-century technology."

Margaret Smith, Faculty art on view at Fitchburg State College, MetroWest Daily News, Dec 23, 2009

There are lots of ways to look at art. One way is to order fries with it. Jeffu Warmouth, an associate professor in the college's Communications Media Department, presents the video installation JeffuBurger. Warmouth explained, "It's an interactive fast food restaurant. Viewers can come up and place orders from a touch screen monitor, and then it triggers wacky things." Warmouth is featured as the eager-to-help food server. Depending on what the viewer chooses, he will serve up any number of odd scenarios, such as Arcade Burger, which will force him to defend himself with a ketchup bottle against invaders from the nefarious land of Burgopia. He said the work is intended as a sly commentary on a fast food society, with a playful twist.

Soterios Johnson and Carolina Miranda, "Can Bravo Pick the Next Top Artist?," WNYC-FM, July 20, 2009

Sebastian Smee, In cyberarts, technology overrides emotion, Boston Globe, May 1, 2009

Greg Cook, Our digital landscape, Boston Phoenix, May 1, 2009

Warmouth's installation is a satiric face-off between McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken joints. You order off interactive computer menus that feature a mix of conceptual and absurdist gags. One restaurant prepares your order (which often seems to involve Warmouth dumping a bucket of chickenish stuff on his head) while the other heckles (that guy will put anything in his burgers). A seriously-silly joke about fast food and conceptual art, it's a hoot.

Greg Cook, Boston Cyberarts Festival, New England Journal for Aesthetic Research, April 30, 2009

James Nadeau, "Observations on the Boston Cyberarts Festival," Big Red and Shiny #105, April 27, 2009

M C Elish, "Interview with Jeffu Warmouth," Boston Cyberarts Blog, April 27, 2009

Cate McQuaid, "A Vegas-style staging of the scripture", Boston Globe, April 22, 2009

Puns, parodies, and jokes have always been Jeffu Warmouth's mainstay. Warmouth's interactive video installation brings the viewer into the middle of a fast-food war between JeffuBurger and JFC. Life-size videos of Warmouth in uniform, ready to serve up the shakes and fries, stand at the ready as the viewer uses a touch screen to order. One or the other will prepare the meal, as his adversary complains. The food is crazy - one server dons onion-ring chain mail to protect himself from the slings and arrows of his business - but usually there's sly social commentary at work. It's a whopper of an installation.

2008

Darren Garnick, The Cold War through the eyes of a potato?, Boston Herald blogs, March 19, 2008

What do JFK's archnemesis Nikita Kruschev and Hasbro's Mr. Potato Head have in common? Not so much, until you ponder the deep philosophical implications of Spudnik, an animated comedy short by Fitchburg filmmaker Jeffu Warmouth. In his 6-minute "sci-fri history of potato space exploration," Warmouth jams in more corny (potato-ey?) puns than your coolest high school science teacher. Spudnik debuted last year at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, but will be making its first film festival appearance this weekend at the Boston Underground Film Festival. "I'm very excited to debut in an Underground festival, since the Potatopian culture originated underground," Warmouth says.

Karen Mann, Food for Art's Sake, Contact Magazine, Spring 2008

2007

DeCordova Annual Exhibition, DeCordova Museum, exhibition catalogue

Jeffu is an art-world trickster and comedian who runs riot with visual and verbal puns in an astounding array of media. He has worked with photography, video, installations, book art, performance art, sculpture, and digital media - whatever he can lay his hands on to satirize art and culture. His recent project/products have included, but are by no means limited to, a televised Wild West reality/game show which pitted artists against each other in questionable contests of skill, knowledge, and creativity (Art Show Down); a supermarket which featured his branded and canned body parts (SuperJEFFUMarket); video spoofs of sci-fi and martial arts movies played out by fruits and vegetables(Day of the Cabbage, among others); and live full-costume Japanese monster wrestling events (Kaiju Big Battel). His latest extravaganza, SPUDNIK, is based entirely on a stupid pun. With video, dioramas, sculpture, and photographs, Jeffu simultaneously pokes fun at the political history of the space program, American cuisine, consumer culture, and - of course - the pomposity of museum displays.

Trainscape: Installation Art for Model Railroads, DeCordova Museum, exhibition catalogue

Milva DiDomizio, All aboard to lands of whimsy, Boston Globe, Dec 27, 2007

Ellen Wetmore and Jeff Warmouth's contribution, Land O' Lactation, was created in response to the recent birth of their son. "It looks kind of like a national park," said Kate Dempsey, one of the curators, "but the tops of the mountains are nipples."

"A dozen visions", The Nelson Mail, Nelson, New Zealand, Nov 21, 2007

From austere to bizarre, the 12 graduating artists from Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology's bachelor of visual art and design course have covered it all for their graduating show at the Suter, (in)visible. Ola Royseland has gone for a theme of comedy, with playful pictures of singing oranges and evil strawberries. "My comedy is based on the subversion of recognisable situations through surreal humour. Surreal humour is stylistically related to, but not to be confused with, the art movement surrealism. It is based on strange juxtapositions, absurd situations and nonsense logic," says Royseland. She lists the Monty Python sketch shows, comedian Eddie Izzard and media artist Jeffu Warmouth as influences.

Andrea Shea, "Holy Caped Creators," Morning Edition, WBUR-FM National Public Radio, Nov 1, 2007

Matthew Reed Baker, "Caped Creators," Boston Magazine, September 2007

Chris Bergeron, "Fantasies on Track," The Daily News Tribune, Sep 24, 2007

Greg Cook, Locomotion Commotion: Trains at the DeCordova, Boston Phoenix, Sep 21, 2007

The train chugs on through Fitchburg couple Ellen Wetmore & Jeffu Warmouth's Land O'Lactation, winding across a causeway above a milky lake poured between realistically rendered mountains. The peaks, though, resemble breasts, with milky fluid trickling from their tips down to the lake below. The piece was inspired by the recent arrival of the couple's son. "Shortly after Alexander's birth," a wall text explains, "Wetmore remarked that her life was being taken over by her breasts." This affords satirist Warmouth, who is unable to resist a cheesy joke, fertile territory ("Mozzarella Mine: Danger Falling Cheese"). It's all too goofy to get me thinking deep thoughts about the nourishing earth, as another wall text suggests, but it does bring to mind the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, which some think were named by a French trapper who thought the peaks looked like a lady's, uh, tetons. You've got to hand it to the French; hereabouts people looked at mountains and saw only the profiles of old men.

Ben Aaronson, "Trainscape: Art in Locomotion," Lincoln Journal, Sep 18, 2007

Cate McQuaid, Keeping Track of Trainscape Proves Challenging, Boston Globe, Sep 15, 2007

Randi Hopkins, "People Get Ready: 'Trainscape' at DeCordova," Boston Phoenix, Aug 22, 2007

Anne Krinsky, The 2007 DeCordova Annual Exhibition, Art New England, Aug/Sep 2007

Jeffu Warmouth's multimedia spoof, Spudnik, which takes a pun to extreme lengths by documenting space exploration by potatoes, is appropriately silly.

Karen Mann, Food for Art's Sake, Fitchburg Pride, Aug 3, 2007

When Jeffu is looking to cast his next production, he goes to the produce aisle of the grocery store. "It's easier to work with vegetables, they don't talk back," said artist Jeffu Warmouth with a smile on his face. While Jeffu, whose pen name comes from the Japanese pronounciation of Jeff, said he couldn't pigeonhole himself into one genre, his work is usually humoristic and based in food. "I wanted to make work that was accessible, that people could understand." Jeffu started by using common household objects in his work.

Linda Laban, "Meet Me at the Museum," Boston Globe, July 19, 2007

Who would want to miss Fitchburg-based artist Jeff Warmouth's innovative Spudnik installation? Warmouth utilizes potatoes and tinfoil to present potatonauts in space.

Spudnik Lands at DeCordova, Lincoln Journal, June 13, 2007

Drawing upon a variety of media, Warmouth adds a comic twist to the DeCordova Annual. Based entirely upon a pun, his latest exhibit SPUDNIK pokes fun at the political history of the space program, American cuisine, and consumer culture. Visitors laugh out loud as potatoes blast into space in the "sci-fry tale of space exploration by potatoes during the Cold Storage War." Featuring a mixed media of video, dioramas, sculpture, and photographs, SPUDNIK provides a humorous look at the world of produce in space.

Charles Guiliano, The 2007 DeCordova Annual Exhibition, Berkshire Fine Arts / Big Red and Shiny, May 19, 2007

Jeffu Warmouth's send up of Spudnik with a video and several maquettes is genuinely hilarious. Be sure to spend time seeing the entire video even though the museum might have given us a bench to sit on. The work is indeed a very "original" and gonzo, sci fi, hypothesis of the secret life of potatoes and how they launch from dirtworld to outer space.

Ken Johnson, Punch, potato scientists, and 'Sodmonsters' at DeCordova, Boston Globe, May 18, 2007

The prize for the funniest artist definitely should go to Jeffu Warmouth for his sculptures, digital photographs, and video documenting an outer space exploration program called Spudnik developed by a race of anthropomorphic potatoes. The deadpan video describing how potato scientists learned to harness intestinal gases as a means to propel "potatonauts" on rockets to other planets is hilarious, and models of vehicles for extraterrestrial travel made from pots, pans, utensils, aluminum foil, and other kinds of kitchenware are quite clever. Warmouth would have to push his ideas to greater extremes to achieve artistic profundity, but what he has done so far is undeniably entertaining.

Variety is the spice of art, Boston Globe, May 10, 2007

It's a good thing the DeCordova Annual Exhibition focuses on variety. Otherwise, how would the curators integrate Sandra Allen's 37-foot-tall drawing of a tree and Jeffu Warmouth's Spudnik installation involving space program politics and potatoes?

Greg Cook, Local Color: The 2007 DeCordova Annual Exhibition, Boston Phoenix, May 11, 2007

No need to apologize for Fitchburg artist Jeffu Warmouth, whose 2007 video Spudnik mixes animation and puppetry to tell its fractured tale of a Soviet-styled nation of potato people and their quest for the stars. "The desire for space exploration among the Potatopians has a long and delicious history," the narrator explains in that optimistic march-of-progress tone familiar from newsreels and science documentaries. Warmouth's installation includes rocket models and photos "documenting" the Spudnik program -- the "Unmanned Foil Satellite" is a ball of tinfoil on three metal legs that exploded on re-entry because "engineers had neglected to poke holes in the foil to prevent steam build-up." Warmouth's project is a light goof on museum displays, filled with groan-inducing puns and Sesame Street-style humor. Sometimes it's too light and silly, but he keeps everything short enough that it doesn't wear out its welcome.

2006

MicroCineFest Baltimore, MD, film festival catalogue

ART SHOW DOWN, Microcinema International, DVD

Cate McQuaid, For them, a marriage of art and humor, Boston Globe, Oct 6, 2006

Jeffu Warmouth is easygoing and thoughtful, but his mustache waxed and curled at either end hints at his showmanship. He's a prankster artist, who looks to the Marx Brothers as inspiration. The summer group show at Green Street Gallery featured Warmouth's film Day of the Cabbage, a pun-filled B-movie takeoff about a giant cabbage hurtling toward Earth.

Mike Rubin, "Art Interactive," Middlesex Beat, Oct 2006

The exhibit aims to critique the game show era by exploring the nature of televised competition and how it interfaces with commercial interests and pop culture as well as the production of contemporary art.

Big Red News Editor, "Art Showdown," Big Red & Shiny #48, Sep 17, 2006

Sean L. McCarthy, "Artists keep eyes on prize," Boston Herald, Sep 16, 2006

At the climax of Art Showdown, game-show contestants face "A Brush With Danger." The object: Wearing special white suits with paintbrush helmets, cover the opponent in paint. Co-curators Jeff Warmouth and Roland Smart are turning art into a televised game show, with Boston artists as the contestants and the show's set as a multimedia installation. "As ridiculously absurd as some of the contests are, we're playing it straight," Warmouth said. "It's actually somewhat of a legit game show." For Art Showdown Smart and Warmouth built a TV studio in the Art Interactive gallery, with a custom stage, elaborate sets and props. Patrons who miss the tapings can view them at the gallery.

Irene De Vette, "Game Show Culture," Boston Phoenix, Sep 15, 2006

Ben Sloat, Astronauts, Monsters and Silicon Flowers @ Green Street, Big Red & Shiny #47, Aug 30, 2006

Jeffu Warmouth, he of the familiar Rollie Fingers moustache, presents a hilarious video with vegetable characters, Day of the Cabbage. Sort of a Godzilla meets 50s B movie Sci-Fi meets Veggie Tales (the surreal Christian children's vegetable puppet show), Warmouth fills his Cabbage film with delicious little details (like Mr. Butternut) and subtle clues that warrant multiple viewings of his ten minute piece. Added to the HD quality and smooth animations of the video itself are the three dimensional effects of its presentation. Housed in a matzoh covered monitor and surrounded by characters from Day of the Cabbage, the video is far more experiential than the norm. Besides admiring the fabrication of the actual props and its production value, you can verbally admonish the cabbage character in person after particularly gruesome scenes! One other note is that the unexpected rumbling of the Orange Line below adds enormously to the physical experience of the video, analogous to the vibrating Playstation control, writ large.

Ray Hainer, Vegetables rampage in the name of art, Boston's Weekly Dig, Aug 23, 2006

Judging from the enthusiastic responses he's received at underground film festivals and art galleries alike, his films' bizarre take on pop culture is incredibly accessible. The unsubtle humor speaks for itself, but it has a serious objective as well. Warmouth is dismayed by the bias against comedy in the art world. Embracing levity was a liberating experience for him--and he hopes that gallery audiences (perhaps too long accustomed to feeling a sort of refined confusion when viewing art) will find his work similarly refreshing.

Cate McQuaid, Astronauts, Monsters and Silicon Flowers, Boston Globe, Aug 17, 2006

Warmouth riffs on B-movies with his overly pun-filled video installation, Day of the Cabbage, which looks like satire you might see in a Muppet Show sketch.

2005

Colin Owens, "ArtFilmDesign #6: Jeffu," ArtFilmTalk.com, Nov 8, 2005

Leann Leake, "15 artists exhibit in the Hampden Gallery," Massachusetts Daily Collegian, Sep 21, 2005

Randi Hopkins, Mozart lovers unite / Art Show Down on CCTV, Boston Phoenix, Sep 16, 2005

Art Show Down, which parodies and critiques game-show culture, is coming to town, organized by clever curators Roland Smart and Jeff Warmouth, presented by Art Interactive together with CCTV, and boasting competitions to hang artwork 10 feet in the air on a rock-climbing wall and battles involving paint brushes stuck to helmets.

Big Red, "Art Show Down," Big Red & Shiny #26, Sep 4, 2005

Matthew Nash, A Conversation with Jeffu Warmouth, Big Red & Shiny #22, May 15, 2005

How do we feed our brains over time? I constantly delve into new things and try to apply the comic lens. My humor stems from a worldview: I see culture, identity, institutions of philosophy, art, science (you know, the little stuff) as absurd human creations to be subverted. Then again, on some days I just want to come up with stupid puns and make myself laugh.

2004

Art Simas, Couple transforms food items into crazy artwork, Telegram & Gazette, Nov 17, 2004

"Today we don't eat stuff directly out of the ground. We go to a supermarket. So I do a twist and a transformation on that. It starts with a self-portrait and splits out to consumer products, with cans labeled as macaronied elbows and raisin brain," says Warmouth. "What happens if I take it so far that I'm eating so many consumer products that I sort of become a product myself? It's social comic commentary but not heavy handed on how our identities are created." At the show, Mr. Warmouth will sell individual cans ($10), "so you can take home the artwork in bits and pieces."

Jim Sullivan & Christopher Muther, "Silly but serious", Boston Globe, July 29, 2004

Neo-hippies nostalgic for the Yippies, those acid-eating, fun- loving folks who ran Pigasus the Pig for president back in 1968, might want to check out the creation by Ravi Jain, Natalie Loveless, Jeff Warmouth, Andrew M.K. Warren, and Douglas R. Weathersby at Cambridge gallery Art Interactive. The project is called "Participatory Democracy," and the artists have created four candidates: the Bearded Lady, Two-Headed Ed, the Contortionist, and the Great Incumbo. These characters are running for some vague, unnamed office, and you can go to the gallery and cast your vote for them. You do this via Skee-ball machine, dart shooting, a computer touch screen, or a paper ballot that's too big to fit in the slot and is discounted if you fold it. A Hobson's choice, indeed. A little cynical are we?

Holland Cotter, Hometown of Utopia and Dissent, New York Times, Jul 23, 2004

The political nature of "Participatory Democracy", at an alternative space called Art Interactive in Cambridge, isn't evasive at all. Organized by curator George Fifield and timed to coincide with the convention, it presents the election process as a farce and a crapshoot. The show is set up as a carnivalesque polling station. Candidates on the ballot include Two-Headed Ed, who sees both sides of any argument; ''The Contortionist,'' who can wrap himself around any issue; and ''The Great Incumbo.'' Visitors cast votes by dart-throwing and ball-tossing, under the supervision of the artists who collaborated on the show, among them Ravi Jain, Natalie Loveless, Jeff Warmouth, Andrew M. K. Warren and Douglas R. Weathersby. Whatever the voting method, The Great Incumbo, represented by the image of a huge grasping hand, is overwhelmingly favored.

Christopher Millis, "E Pluribus Museum: The Politics of Art," Boston Phoenix, Jul 15, 2004

Bill Marx, Entertaining the DNC, WBUR Online Arts, WBUR-FM, Jul 8, 2004

Political art can make its point by lampooning all things political. Art Interactive in Cambridge, MA is presenting an interactive exhibition called "Participatory Democracy." The work of five local artists, the installation treats the process of voting, from marking a ballot to media exit polls, as a form of circus entertainment. A canned video presentation instructs voters on what they are going to experience, which includes tossing darts at paper ballots hung on the wall, taking part in surreal exit polls, and voting by Skee-Ball game. Candidates include the bearded lady, the contortionist, two-headed Ed, and the Great Incombo.

Mary Jo Palumbo, "Electoral collage," Boston Herald, May 15, and Cambridge Chronicle, May 27, 2004

The candidates are shady, and the polling methods questionable. In fact, the whole voting process is downright absurd. A roll of the Skee-Ball registers a vote, as does a throw of the dart, which punches through a paper ballot. "The whole game of participating in the democratic process is very carnivalesque," said Fitchburg artist Jeff Warmouth, who created the Skee-Ball game. "We're manipulated by signage and propaganda. Sometimes the electoral process can look like a freak show."

2003

25 Hrs, Barcelona, Spain, exhibition catalogue

Plastic Fantastic, Chicago Art Institute, exhibition catalogue

Boom Box: The Art of Sound, Mills Gallery, Audio CD of exhibition

Toni Baca, "Art Gallery opens art show Contemporary Genre," Impact, Nov 21, 2003

Randi Hopkins, "(Way) out of Asia," Boston Phoenix, Aug 15, 2003

Cate McQuaid, "Mills Gallery is alive with ambitious sounds of 'Boom Box,'" Boston Globe, Feb 16, 2003

Josh B. Wardrop, "An aural report on 'Boom Box'," Cambridge Tab, Jan 31, 2003

Aiden Fitzgerald, "Mills' 'Boom Box' creates a buzz," Boston Herald, Jan 23, 2003

Carlene Hempel, "His Collaborative Curating Makes for Sound Art", Boston Globe, Jan 17, 2003

Jeffu Warmouth's Sinkrophonium is a stainless-steel sink flanked by copper pipes and aluminum light fixtures. With a quick blow into an attached clear tube, it creates a medley that sounds like Louis Armstrong playing a horn inside his bathtub.

2002

The 17th Drawing Show, Mills Gallery, exhibition catalogue

The quality I cared about in making my selections for this exhibition is a sense of proximity to thought and a sense of this isolated element as being in the thick of a larger ongoing process and project. Such a definition allows a Xerox of a newspaper article and diaristic notes on recipe cards to participate in a regime of clear drawingness.

Andy Levine, "Faculty showcases skills in 'New Work,'" The Point, Oct 5, 2002

Craig S. Semon, 'New Work' on exhibit at college, Montachusett Sentinel, Sep 29, 2002

For SuperJEFFUMarket, Jeffu Warmouth created 25 feet of supermarket shelving, completely stocked with every characteristic, eccentricity, flaw and quirk of his physique and psyche, all labeled and neatly stacked and ready for public consumption. "What I wanted to construct is a self-portrait in the form of a full supermarket, filled with myself devolved into packaged consumer goods," Mr. Warmouth explained.

Jessica Rosen, "Monster Wrestling: Kaiju Big Battel," Free Williamsburg issue #27, June 2002

Scott Speh, Hot Commodities 12, Hot Commodities #12, Feb 14, 2002

Jeff Warmouth's recipe box Recipe/Experiments contained dozens of 3x5 cards that he mailed to himself and others containing either art or sandwich ideas. I like art and sandwiches!

2001

Lighten Up: Art with a Sense of Humor, DeCordova Museum, exhibition catalogue

Cate McQuaid, 'Lighten Up' makes art funny business, Boston Globe, Apr 14, 2001

Many of the artists take off from popular culture, including (nod to Warhol) mass marketing. Jeffu Warmouth's "Super Jeffumarket" is boxes and supermarket shelves full of cans presumably filled with the artist's own tasty personal byproducts: "canned lungs," "raw nerves," and "drained self-esteem." It's all in the packaging, we're told, and in packaging himself, Warmouth somehow sadly reinvigorates his self- esteem.

Rich Ceisler, Local Comic's Advice to Artists at Decordova, Boston Globe, Apr 14, 2001

"I enjoyed Jeffu Warmouth's collection of tin cans with creative labels such as 'Forked Tongue,' 'Peeled Toes,' and 'Crushed Resolve.' Obviously to be enjoyed with a fine Chianti and fava beans.

Leon Nigrosh, Laugh at them: Funny art at the DeCordova, Worcester Phoenix, Mar 16, 2001

For sheer invention and outright laughts, Boston media artist Jeffu Warmouth's SuperJeffuMarket evokes a growing series of grins, snickers, and chuckles. Andy Warhol (1928-1985) may have copied Brillo boxes, but Warmouth gives us a whole supermarket aisle of shelves crammed with cans of Rolled Eyeballs, Forked Tongue, Bruised Ego, and more, running a full 25-feet long. Each can label is made up to look like the real thing, with ingredients, guarantees, net weights, and the appropriate pictures for products like Shaolin Fist and Peeled Toes. This display has proved so popular that a variety of the products are actually for sale in the museum's store. What better way to enjoy the show than to take home a can of art humor for only $9.99? Leave some time to watch the short videos. Jeffu Warmouth's Kung-fu Kitchen is a hilarous chop-socky battle between an eggplant samurai and an evil cabbage warlord.

Mark Lynch, interview, "Inquiry," WICN-FM Radio, Worcester, MA, Mar 5, 2001

Robert J. Hughes, "Futures & Options: Make 'Em Laugh", Wall Street Journal, Feb 16, 2001

Here is a group of contemporary artists the viewer is supposed to laugh with, not at. This show explores humor in modern art using visual puns and even art-world jokes. Among the artists is Jeffu Warmouth, who is on display with Kung-fu Kitchen, a live-action martial arts film with an all-vegetable cast.

Mary Sherman, DeCordova gains wit with show, Boston Herald, Feb 4, 2001

Canned goods provide a visual pun in Jeffu Warmouth's elbow macaroni label, which sports human elbows instead of pasta. "Rather than be reconstituted by these products that I ingest and invest in," Warmouth says, "I want to put a little bit of me in every can."

Robin Vaughan, "Humor is art form," Boston Herald, February 9, 2001

Oren Bendavid-Val, interview, "All Things Considered," WBUR-FM Radio, Boston, 2001

Take My Art, Please!, Museums Boston, Spring 2001

Familiar faces--like those in William Wegman's signature weimeraner portraits--appear alongside playful visual gags like Jeffu Warmouth's Bagel Belly (1999), a photo series of a portly stomach being smeared with cream cheese and lox.

2000

Distinguishing/Distinguished Jewish, Starr Gallery, exhibition catalogue

From Harpo and Groucho to Weegee and Woody, Jewish humor as an American pop cultural discourse has been the most formative element in shaping Warmouth's aesthetic and his identity. Thus, Warmouth raises the question of distinguishing Jewish in his own person as a non-Jew who has absorbed the Jewish comedic sensibility to the point where he is constructed Jewish. In this installation, Warmouth puts on his chef's hat as his skull cap and he demonstrates that he is well versed in the ancient Talmudic art of pilpul (peppering), and of mixing and cutting things up. The project is in a sense an extension of other explorations of ethinic cuisines such as his Kung Fu Kitchen. Some of the recipes like the Levi-tating Aero-Cheese Burger draw upon the impossibilities of conceptual and Fluxus humor. In reading some of Warmouth's recipes, it is as if someone had allowed George Maciunas and Yoko Ono to become the guest editors of an issue of Kashrus Magazine. -- Louis Kaplan, curator

Kevin Talbot, "Live Monster Wrestling!" Weekly Dig, May 10-17, 2000

"Al Cinema Su Internet," MediaMente, www.mediamente.it, Mar 24, 2000

Christopher Mills, Art, Jews, and the Holocaust, Boston Phoenix, Jan 28, 2000

Jeff Warmouth's hilarious posters, send-ups of kosher recipes, are undercut by a relentless, slapstick video.

Christine Temin, 'Witness' gives varied visions of Holocaust, Boston Globe, Jan 26, 2000

Jeff Warmouth is the jokester of the show, the gross-out guy. Among his Catskill-worthy Strictly Kosher Style: Recipes Spiced With Jewish Humor are lurid color close-ups of him grabbing a round portion of his ample belly, right around the navel, turning it into a bagel onto which he slathers cream cheese and lox. As well as poking fun at Jewish dietary laws, Warmouth questions rules that don't always seem to make sense, even to some Jews.

1999

The Apartment Show, Zach Feuer's Apartment, Boston, MA (catalogue on CD-ROM)

Christine Temin, "Fun House," Boston Globe, Apr 1, 1999

T.J. Medrek, "Stellar Dweller," Boston Herald, Sunday, Mar 21, 1999

1998

Museum School News, cover image, Spring 1998

David Wildman, New gallery is for the up and coming, Boston Globe, Jan 25, 1998

Warmouth brought his wacky sense of humor to the gallery with a collection of devices that perform futile tasks, such as can openers that, when an observer steps on a switch, power forks and spoons that spin around nonsensically in frying pans filled with wing nuts and eyeballs with screws in them. "I'm influenced by absurdist comedy and entertainment," says Warmouth. "Every piece I do has an element of joke telling or subversion."

1997

Consum(e)ation: Food, Fetish, and Fantasy, Tufts University Gallery, exhibition catalogue

David Wildman, "More frightening than the cookie monster?," Boston Globe, Jun 8, 1997

Stuff Magazine, May 1997

Cate McQuaid, There's no place like home... Boston Globe, Mar 29, 1997

The kitchen, put together by Jeff Warmouth and Michael Dwyer, attempts to cover too many ideas and comes out like a Dagwood sandwich that you can't get your mouth around.

Mary Sherman, At Mills Gallery, home is where the art is, Boston Herald, Mar 16, 1997

A lot of humor runs through this rambling house, but it is Michael Dwyer and Jeff Warmouth's kitchen that offers the largest dose of it. Standing to one side is a table shaped like a slice of bread. Then there is a giant spoon and fork poised to dig into a mound of dirt littered with seed packages, and best of all, a number of wacko videos that parody food shows. In one, a chef sputters out imaginary ingredients with the same authority those TV chefs do, imagining that we all have a ready familiarity with the variety of obscure spices they often cite.

Deb Shapiro, When (home) life becomes artistic metaphor, The Tab, Feb 25, 1997

Other rooms include a kitchen where Michael Dwyer and Jeff Warmouth "feed each other morsels of humor and philosophy" via their on-line counters.

1995

Museum School News, cover image, Spring 1995

Reading the Image, Tufts Journal, May 1995

Frederick Kalil, Expect 'The Unexpected,' Tufts Journal, Feb 1995

1994

International Art Exhibition of Student Works, Nagoya University of Arts, exhibition catalogue, 1994

John Carlos Cantu, Post-modern classics from Warmouth, Ann Arbor News, Aug 25, 1994

Warmouth's photography uses a variety of formal tricks to submerge the sense of aesthetic space through a clever juxtaposition of multiple perspectives. Through the use of screens, overlapping slides and filters - while rigorously avoiding electronic manipulation or multiple exposures - Warmouth creates otherworldy images that betray as much a literary inspiration as they do a visual interpretation. Warmouth has crafted a seamless whole from photographic projection, photographic compression, and photographic space. This juxtaposition of elements has created in turn a subdued and dramatic cross-narrative epiphany in shades of blood.

1993

Marsha Miro, Art for the Holidays, Detroit Free Press, Dec 7, 1993

Jeffrey Warmouth's color photographs shift scales and mix worlds.