Jesse Sugarmann
Bakersfield, CA
Jesse Sugarmann is an interdisciplinary artist working in video, performance, sculpture and fibers. His work engages the automotive industry as a manufacturer of human identity, accessing automotive history as an index of both cultural identity and social history. Jesse has exhibited work both nationally and internationally in venues such as the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; el Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon; the Banff Center, Canada; Filmbase, Ireland; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Michael Strogoff, Marfa; el Museo de Arte Moderno de Santander, Spain; Drift Station, Omaha; Fugitive Projects, Nashville; the 21c Museum, Louisville; and High Desert Test Sites 2013. His work has been written about in publications including ArtForum, Art Papers, ART LTD, Art Cards, Art Fag City, Art Car Nation, Frieze Magazine, and The New York Times. Jesse lives and works in Bakersfield, CA.
We Build Excitement
Jesse Sugarmann is an interdisciplinary artist working in video, performance, sculpture and fibers.
Artist BioThe American auto industry is a manufacturer of personal and cultural identity. The failure of the American auto industry was therefore a failure of self and the closure of several longstanding automotive marquees equated a loss of cultural identity. Shot at a decommissioned Pontiac dealership in Pontiac, Michigan, We Build Excitement is an experimental documentary featuring an environmental study of a shuttered car dealership, punctuated by sculptural car wrecks and interpretive works performed by car salesmen. We Build Excitement isolates and categorizes the portion of identity that has been lost by the auto industry’s degeneration, documenting the social scars left by its breakdown.