Jacob Kassay
Untitled
May 23 - October 3, 2010
All works Untitled, 2009
The project for Collezione Maramotti comprises ten new pieces, some of which are mounted on the wall, while others are lying on the floor.
The canvasses have the look of reflecting panels which convey the ghost-like presence of the underlying paint while absorbing and rendering the external surrounding space of the piece. The canvasses on the floor, as sculptural elements, are conceived as rejects, surging to the value of possibility/potential.
Kassay's work is based on a minimalist praxis where the industrial process for the production of the art-piece subtracts the quality value of the artefact to replace it with the value of objectuality, turning it into something of interchangeable quality.
The conceptual elements of monochrome, the objectification of paint pigments, the reflection of colour, movement and form, become central in the artist's research, and are codified and translated into a new metaphysics of the painted surface, in a new form of abstraction, strongly lyrical, where the reference to photography appears evident.
The pieces are conceived starting from the priming of the canvas with wide expanses of an acrylic base to make the surface water-proof, and the subsequent application of a silver finish coat which, through a chemical process similar to the industrial process of an electroplating bath, crystallises the accidental components of the painting on canvas, thus creating irregularities on the mirror-like surface. The electroplating process also produces singeing and burning on the uncoated elements along the edges of the canvas, and the appearance of unevenly burnished and oxidized areas on the metal-like surface which are out Kassay's control.
Kassay, who has a photographic background, has transposed many of these techniques in his painting practice. The chemical process of mirror plating on the canvasses is comparable to the old photographic process using a suspension of silver salts in gelatin: both techniques produce a transmutation where the light becomes the central element for the sensitization of the base and for the perception of the work.
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Ufficio stampa
Studio Pesci
via san vitale 27
40125 bologna - italy
tel +39 051 269267
fax +39 051 2960748
e-mail: info@studiopesci.it
www.studiopesci.it
Private preview: 22 May 2010 h. 6.00 pm, in the presence of the artist.
The exhibition, admission free, may be visited from 23 May to 3 October 2010 during the same opening hours as those of the permanent collection:
Thursday and Friday 2.30 pm-6.30 pm;
Saturday and Sunday 9.30 am-12.30 pm and 3.00 pm - 6.00 pm.
Closed: from 1 to 25 August
Jacob Kassay. Installation at the Maramotti Collection
Biographical note
Jacob Kassay was born in Buffalo in 1984. Lives and works in New York.
This is his first exhibition in Italy.
Solo exhibitions
2010
Art Concept, Paris
Franklin Art Works, Minneapolis
2009
Eleven Rivington, New York
2005
No No, Kitchen Distribution, Buffalo