Jeff Gillette
Cover for Issue 399
Los Angeles
Issue 399 October 19, 2010

In the late '80s, artist Jeff Gilette was in the Peace Corps in Nepal, living in a quiet, rural farming village. Without running water, electricity, roads or any other westerners, he experienced a very peaceful existence. To counterbalance the calm, he would often travel and explore the biggest, most chaotic, noisy, urban cities in India. There he came face to face with some of the most wretched living conditions found anywhere in the world, in the shantytowns of Kolkata, Mumbai, and Delhi. Aside from the seething humanity, the suffering, the unfairness, and cruelty of the slum was a strange beauty. The cacophony of filthy debris rising from oceans of garbage comprises an architecture of poverty and necessity. What emerges is a living environment of aesthetic wonder, of spectacular variations of color, form, and texture. He has been drawn to these visions for years and has returned a dozen times to capture more experiences and visuals to help re-create the too-realism of his "slumscape" paintings, sculptures, and installations.

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