From the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts, Third-Year Project Exhibition "OK, Now What?"
"For this exhibition, inspired by a recent exploration of vinyl cut-outs, the work takes a step away from his more sculptural builds and leans towards a playful, text-based, and pattern-driven piece. With dreams of throwing caution to the wind and the absurdity of yearning for a want of reckless, childish joy; Dire Consequences! invites the viewer to imagine what causes can lead a person to the bizarrely fatal outcomes of kissing on coin-operated pony rides."
Click for better quality! Close-up's and my interview about the piece under the cut :]
Interview conducted with my classmate, whom I've labelled as "V" for her privacy
V: So, what from the initial joke inspired you for this work?
Jack: Outside of the murder and the dead body? I think it would have to be the casual, blunt absurdity of the joke. I found it quite compelling.
V: How do you think you incorporated that into your work?
Jack: It feels silly, but when I started thinking about a casual sort of absurdity, I kept circling back to dumb meme’s and jokes you find online. There are pictures out there of really strange places, and someone posed the question of “oh, well what if we kissed at..?” say, the Brutalist McDonald’s Play Place..? Or on the Jouch..? And so on as people kept finding more absurd places and imagining more outlandish scenarios.
But I thought, well, what if we (amorphous) did kiss in that absurd place? And what if we passionately answered the question and all that we left behind were fragments of the circumstances that led us there?
So, I thought it would be interesting to put my brave little cowboy, James —a reckless little character I’ve used in past works to explore themes of nostalgia with— through a bizarre and fatal happenstance (much like the original joke), and leave it to the viewer to wonder how on earth he ended up there.
V: Would you say that’s your intention for the audience?
Jack: Yes, definitely. I want my viewers to look at these pieces I’ve left behind, let them take the rains, and start imagining wild scenarios of what happened. I want them to have lots of fun with it —I’m explicitly asking them if they’d want to make-out on a kiddie ride for christ’s sake— but I still want the viewer to question what brought James to this point in time. To think and ask about what kind of childish joy (or mid-life crisis) (or mad stroke of genius) James would have needed to have, for him to confidently carry through with something as inherently stupid as kissing on a kids pony ride.
Here are my exhibition pieces from Ripe, which had its opening night last week. If you weren't there then it runs until the 1st of December so there's still time to check it out!
Egyptian Paste beads, colored with various percentages of Copper Oxide (darker end of the spectrum) and Copper Carbonate, with pure porcelain beads for the white.
So I quickly whipped up a little bright and positive street exhibition to cheer up people on the time of covid-19. Next to my new sona, I simply felt like drawing bunch of cute girls this time.
Stay safe and healthy, everyone!♥ ♥ ♥
★Commission info★
