Talk:Jacques Louis Vidal

A. Factual corrections to existing prose

This article concerns a living person; under WP:BLP disputed material about living people must be removed or rewritten promptly even when sourced, particularly where the source may have been imprecise. The subject has identified the following items as inaccurate.

• Lead — nationality and place of birth. Current lead says "American artist." Vidal was born in 1982 in Paris, France, and raised in Houston, Texas. Suggested wording: "Jacques Louis Vidal (born 1982) is a French-born American artist based in Brooklyn, New York."

  Source: Harkawik artist page biography.^[1]

• Gallery name spelling. Existing prose has "Harakwik" in at least one place; correct spelling is "Harkawik."^[1]

• SMFA name. Existing prose says "School Museum of Fine Arts in Boston." Correct institutional name is the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (now part of Tufts University). Recommend piping: [[School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts|School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]].

• Death-row / arrest characterization (Nothing is Possible In There is No Future paragraph). The current text describes the pen pal as being "on death row" and says the two "had first been arrested together while doing graffiti as teenagers in Texas." The subject states that neither characterization is correct: the pen pal was incarcerated but not on death row, and the two were caught doing graffiti together but were not arrested together. Per WP:BLP (which extends to third parties named in a BLP), please soften to:

  "focused on corresponding and collaborating with a childhood friend, referred to as 'Jerry,' who at the time was incarcerated in Texas. The two had been caught doing graffiti together as teenagers."

  This preserves what the cited source establishes (correspondence, Texas, graffiti backstory) without the contested specifics.

• Jacques Louis Vidal Charitable Fund / donation list. The current paragraph attributes specific donations from a "Jacques Louis Vidal Charitable Fund" to named recipients (Prarieland, Beverlys). The subject states these details are inaccurate. Even where sourced (the cited ProPublica entry and Artnet News items), specific named donations to named recipients are exactly the kind of factual claim about a living person that WP:BLP requires to be removed when the subject disputes accuracy and the underlying public records may have conflated entities. Requested action: remove the sentence(s) about the Charitable Fund and the specific donation recipients in their entirety. Board-membership claims (Montez Press Radio, Do Not Research, KAJE) may remain if otherwise sourced.

B. Lead paragraph — description of the work

The lead currently identifies Vidal only as "an American artist" before jumping to education and the spaces he co-founded. Per MOS:LEAD the opening should briefly indicate what the subject is known for. Proposed insertion immediately after the first sentence of the lead, before the education sentence:

Working across sculpture, installation, collage, and works on paper, Vidal has developed a multi-medium experimental practice that combines hand-carved wood, [[3D printing]], found and fabricated materials, and, more recently, drawings reworked through [[Generative artificial intelligence|generative AI]] image tools.<ref name="jancou-look" /><ref name="jancou-games" /><ref name="harkawik-jobs" /><ref name="broadway" /><ref name="cad-broadway" />

Optional follow-on sentence drawing on the two Marc Jancou exhibition essays, which framed his shows as immersive environments rather than collections of discrete objects:

His exhibitions have often been conceived as immersive, architectural environments: his 2009 solo ''You Are What You Look At'' at Marc Jancou Contemporary in New York presented collages, sculptures and architectural fragments organized around what the gallery described as "isolation klosets,"<ref name="jancou-look" /> and his 2011 follow-up ''Games People Play'' used the architecture of the gallery itself to stage a three-room sequence of "analog interfaces, false walls, conspiratorial pictures, and memory sculptures."<ref name="jancou-games" />

Notes for the reviewer: the descriptive terms are drawn from gallery and exhibition documentation rather than independent criticism, so the phrasing is deliberately factual ("works across X, Y, Z") rather than evaluative. "Experimental" is used in its conventional art-world sense (a practice that varies medium between projects) rather than as promotional puffery; if the reviewer prefers, "multi-medium" alone is acceptable.

C. Additions to the "Life and work" section

Proposed insertion after the existing paragraph mentioning Lighthouse Works:

Since 2019, Vidal has been an adjunct professor of sculpture at [[Pace University]] in New York.<ref name="harkawik-bio" />

Proposed insertion to fill the gap between the 2007 Horton show and the 2014 Nothing is Possible paragraph:

Vidal's first solo show with [[Marc Jancou Contemporary]] in New York, ''You Are What You Look At'', opened in November 2009 and presented collages, sculptures and architectural fragments staged inside what the artist termed "isolation klosets."<ref name="jancou-look" /> His follow-up at the same gallery, ''Games People Play'' (2011), used the architecture of the gallery itself to construct a three-room sequence the gallery described as "analog interfaces, false walls, conspiratorial pictures, and memory sculptures."<ref name="jancou-games" /> Earlier in 2009, his MFA thesis exhibition ''Liquidation'' was presented at the [[Yale University Art Gallery]].<ref name="harkawik-bio" />

Proposed insertion to bring the article forward through 2024:

In 2019, Vidal presented the solo exhibition ''Perfect Strangers'' at Andrew Rafacz in Chicago,<ref name="rafacz">{{cite web |title=Perfect Strangers / Andrew Rafacz |url=https://www.andrewrafacz.com/exhibition/jacques-louis-vidal-perfect-strangers |website=Andrew Rafacz |access-date=May 29, 2026}}</ref> followed by ''Boybrain'' at Harkawik in Los Angeles (2020),<ref name="harkawik-boybrain">{{cite web |title=Jacques Vidal: Boybrain |url=https://www.harkawik.com/vidal-boybrain |website=Harkawik |access-date=May 29, 2026}}</ref><ref name="cad-la">{{cite web |title=Jacques Louis Vidal at Harkawik, Los Angeles |url=https://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/project/jacques-louis-vidal-at-harkawik-los-angeles-12161 |website=Contemporary Art Daily |date=March 14, 2020 |access-date=May 29, 2026}}</ref> ''Dead End Jobs That Kill'' at Harkawik in New York (2021),<ref name="harkawik-jobs">{{cite web |title=Jacques Louis Vidal: Dead End Jobs That Kill |url=https://www.harkawik.com/vidal-jobs |website=Harkawik |access-date=May 29, 2026}}</ref><ref name="cad-ny">{{cite web |title=Jacques Louis Vidal at Harkawik, New York |url=https://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/project/jacques-louis-vidal-at-harkawik-new-york-20277 |website=Contemporary Art Daily |date=October 2, 2021 |access-date=May 29, 2026}}</ref> and ''Underground Posterz'' at Broadway Gallery in New York (2024). For ''Underground Posterz'', Vidal transformed the gallery's project room into a distorted retail environment built around a latticed wooden shaft housing animatronic wooden animals and collaged crystal fragments; the works on paper combined his own drawings, output from an AI image generator, and hand-applied ink, pencil, pigment and laser-cut wood components.<ref name="broadway">{{cite web |title=Jacques Louis Vidal in the Project Room: Underground Posterz |url=https://broadwaygallery.nyc/exhibitions/49-jacques-louis-vidal-in-the-project-room-underground-posterz/ |website=Broadway Gallery |date=April 25, 2024 |access-date=May 29, 2026}}</ref><ref name="cad-broadway">{{cite web |title=Jacques Louis Vidal at Broadway, New York |url=https://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/project/jacques-louis-vidal-at-broadway-new-york-33306 |website=Contemporary Art Daily |access-date=May 29, 2026}}</ref>

D. New sections to add

Proposed new section after "Life and work":

==Exhibitions==

===Selected solo exhibitions===
* 2024 – ''Underground Posterz'', Broadway Gallery, New York
* 2021 – ''Dead End Jobs That Kill'', Harkawik, New York
* 2020 – ''Boybrain'', Harkawik, Los Angeles
* 2019 – ''Perfect Strangers'', Andrew Rafacz, Chicago
* 2016 – ''Nothing is Possible in There is No Future'', The Hills Esthetic Center, Chicago
* 2014 – ''Workin In Ah Whole Mine'' (with Michael Mahalchick), 247365, New York
* 2012 – ''I Have Some Very Special Trunx To Share'', Texan Equities, Los Angeles
* 2012 – ''Free Range Sculpture'', Champion Contemporary, Austin
* 2011 – ''Games People Play'', Marc Jancou Contemporary, New York
* 2011 – ''The Parlor Tricks of Politics'', Sunday Gallery, Berlin
* 2010 – ''You Are What You Look At'', Marc Jancou Contemporary, New York
* 2009 – ''Liquidation'', [[Yale University Art Gallery]], New Haven
* 2009 – ''I Make My Own Luck'', Lamontagne Gallery, Boston
* 2007 – ''Wood Folks is Good Folks'', Horton Gallery, New York

===Selected group exhibitions===
* 2023 – ''Daydreaming pressed against a fence'', Harkawik, Los Angeles
* 2022 – ''Mediated Meditation'', Harkawik at NADA, New York
* 2020 – ''Unraveling'', Hesse Flatow, New York
* 2017 – ''Cosmic Joke'', Safe Gallery, Brooklyn
* 2012 – ''In the Excellence'', [[Contemporary Arts Museum Houston]]
* 2012 – ''CKTV'', Cleopatra's, [[Shanghai Biennale]], Shanghai
* 2010 – ''Rive Gauche / Rive Droite'', Marc Jancou Contemporary, Paris
* 2009 – ''Maximal Minimal'', Primopiano, Lugano, Switzerland

''Source for the consolidated exhibition list:''<ref name="harkawik-bio" />

==Curatorial projects==
* 2022 – ''heaven above sea below'' (with Reilly Davidson), Lubov, New York
* 2021 – ''Disease was my Life Coach'', Lubov, New York
* 2010 – ''The Salt Mine'' (with Meredith James), Primetime, Brooklyn
* 2009 – ''Careerists and Visionaries'', Marc Jancou Contemporary, New York<ref name="jancou-careerists">{{cite web |title=Careerists and Visionaries — Curated by Jacques Louis Vidal |url=https://www.marcjancou.com/archive/careerists-and-visionaries |website=Marc Jancou Contemporary |access-date=May 29, 2026}}</ref>

==Public collections==
* The Bunker Artspace ([[Beth Rudin DeWoody]] Collection), [[West Palm Beach, Florida]]<ref name="bunker">{{cite web |title=The Bunker Artspace |url=https://www.thebunkerartspace.com/ |website=The Bunker Artspace |access-date=May 29, 2026}}</ref>

E. Citations referenced above

For the reviewer's convenience, the new ref name definitions used in the proposed insertions are:

<ref name="jancou-look">{{cite web |title=You Are What You Look At – Jacques Louis Vidal |url=https://www.marcjancou.com/archive/you-are-what-you-look-at |website=Marc Jancou Contemporary |date=November 4, 2009 |access-date=May 29, 2026}}</ref>
<ref name="jancou-games">{{cite web |title=Games People Play – Jacques Louis Vidal |url=https://www.marcjancou.com/archive/games-people-play |website=Marc Jancou Contemporary |date=February 9, 2011 |access-date=May 29, 2026}}</ref>

(The other ref names used above are defined inline within their respective insertions.)

F. Categories to add

Suggested additions to the existing category block at the foot of the article (verify which are already present before adding):

[[Category:1982 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:American sculptors]]
[[Category:Artists from Paris]]
[[Category:Pace University faculty]]
[[Category:Yale School of Art alumni]]

G. Notes on sources

• Gallery sites (harkawik.com, marcjancou.com, broadwaygallery.nyc, andrewrafacz.com) are used only to verify exhibition dates, titles, and venues, and to source the gallery's own descriptive language for shows, attributed as such.
• Contemporary Art Daily is used as documentation of exhibitions.
• Subject's own website is used only consistent with WP:ABOUTSELF.
• No evaluative or promotional language has been added.

Visualmedia101 (talk) 16:40, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

Polite bump — this request has been open for approximately five weeks and the {{request edit}} backlog has grown from 464 to 640 in that time. I'm happy to split this into some smaller single-topic requests if that would make review easier (for example, separating the BLP-grade corrections in Section A from the additions in Sections C–D). Please let me know if any specific item needs additional sourcing or would benefit from being resubmitted on its own. Thanks for your time. xo Visualmedia101 (talk) 18:24, 28 July 2026 (UTC)