Jacob Kassay
F’O’O’T’A’G’E’
23 May - 25 Jul 2020
JACOB KASSAY
F’O’O’T’A’G’E’
23 May - 25 July 2020
Our invitation to Jacob Kassay’s exhibition is a cross-eyed Siamese kitten. The genetic deformation embedded in this adorable image foreshadows the duplication at work in F’O’O’T’A’G’E’. It is indeed impossible to focus one’s eyes on the eleven OSB1 panels varying in size that have been mounted on the walls, their surfaces vibrating so much as if pixelated. If it isn’t our eyes that are squinting, it must be that the image itself is deformed. The photograph of the panels printed directly on its subject - the wood - makes the object tremble. The image is not correctly superimposed on its source; the crossing over of the two produces a defect that renders their relationship tangible. This ghost-like presence, created by the splitting into two and therefore the disappearance of the integrity of the captured surface, has already been explored by Jacob Kassay - former photography student at the University of Buffalo – through his previous exhibition You at the gallery Art: Concept. Here the Siamese reiteration of the object within its own edges and the redundancy of the panels in the space produce an extraordinary effect: a phenomenon of exhaustion that doesn’t allow us to recognise the forms or words despite their repetition. In the reign of the compression of images, the choice of this ‘chipboard’ makes perfect sense. A chipboard is a chipboard is a chipboard. The material experiences a feeling of disconnection from the reality of itself.
Chipboard surrounds our dwellings and is laid in building sites in the place of future roofs or foorboards. It is thus disturbing, vis-à-vis the solidity of the panels, to experience a visual breakingdown specifc to the digital. We are reminded of space modelling or decor from video games such as the domestic scenes in the SIMS and the walls or furniture that characters can accidentally or purposefully walk through due to a technical bug. Their bodies fused into the walls chop up the textures that are lagging and still struggling to recompose in three dimensions. We are invited by the two metal sculptures embedded into the walls, both entitled Footrest, to literally step foot into the scenery of the exhibition. The footrest is usually inclined and placed underneath a desk to improve one’s posture in front of a screen, relieving the fatigue created by the digital image almost by extension. Through the foot, these hollow sculptures re-introduce the human level and physical anchorage amidst the pixelated scenery created by the untrained eye and made defective through the camera lens.
Incidentally, one of the panels references a famous body in movement through its repetition of almost the exact same format of Nude descending a staircase (1902) by Marcel Duchamp. This reference signals that, beyond the digital realm that we can attribute to the deformation of the images on the walls, an old dispute continues to play out between photography and painting regarding the representation of movement. Marcel Duchamp2 , inspired by the result of movement by chronophotography, painted a body in ‘wood-coloured’ chips oriented differently to suggest a naked model descending a staircase. In F’O’O’T’A’G’E’ the subject is in continuous movement, this time put in motion by the unavoidable meeting of the pupils of a Siamese cat.
F’O’O’T’A’G’E’
23 May - 25 July 2020
Our invitation to Jacob Kassay’s exhibition is a cross-eyed Siamese kitten. The genetic deformation embedded in this adorable image foreshadows the duplication at work in F’O’O’T’A’G’E’. It is indeed impossible to focus one’s eyes on the eleven OSB1 panels varying in size that have been mounted on the walls, their surfaces vibrating so much as if pixelated. If it isn’t our eyes that are squinting, it must be that the image itself is deformed. The photograph of the panels printed directly on its subject - the wood - makes the object tremble. The image is not correctly superimposed on its source; the crossing over of the two produces a defect that renders their relationship tangible. This ghost-like presence, created by the splitting into two and therefore the disappearance of the integrity of the captured surface, has already been explored by Jacob Kassay - former photography student at the University of Buffalo – through his previous exhibition You at the gallery Art: Concept. Here the Siamese reiteration of the object within its own edges and the redundancy of the panels in the space produce an extraordinary effect: a phenomenon of exhaustion that doesn’t allow us to recognise the forms or words despite their repetition. In the reign of the compression of images, the choice of this ‘chipboard’ makes perfect sense. A chipboard is a chipboard is a chipboard. The material experiences a feeling of disconnection from the reality of itself.
Chipboard surrounds our dwellings and is laid in building sites in the place of future roofs or foorboards. It is thus disturbing, vis-à-vis the solidity of the panels, to experience a visual breakingdown specifc to the digital. We are reminded of space modelling or decor from video games such as the domestic scenes in the SIMS and the walls or furniture that characters can accidentally or purposefully walk through due to a technical bug. Their bodies fused into the walls chop up the textures that are lagging and still struggling to recompose in three dimensions. We are invited by the two metal sculptures embedded into the walls, both entitled Footrest, to literally step foot into the scenery of the exhibition. The footrest is usually inclined and placed underneath a desk to improve one’s posture in front of a screen, relieving the fatigue created by the digital image almost by extension. Through the foot, these hollow sculptures re-introduce the human level and physical anchorage amidst the pixelated scenery created by the untrained eye and made defective through the camera lens.
Incidentally, one of the panels references a famous body in movement through its repetition of almost the exact same format of Nude descending a staircase (1902) by Marcel Duchamp. This reference signals that, beyond the digital realm that we can attribute to the deformation of the images on the walls, an old dispute continues to play out between photography and painting regarding the representation of movement. Marcel Duchamp2 , inspired by the result of movement by chronophotography, painted a body in ‘wood-coloured’ chips oriented differently to suggest a naked model descending a staircase. In F’O’O’T’A’G’E’ the subject is in continuous movement, this time put in motion by the unavoidable meeting of the pupils of a Siamese cat.