JACOB KASSAY

HIJK Xavier Hufkens 29 May–31 July 2015 Rivoli

Press Release

Xavier Hufkens is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by American artist Jacob Kassay at 107 rue St-Georges.

Kassay explores the ways in which objects can oscillate between dimensional states by using fragments of both surfaces and spatial volumes as templates. Kassay re-drafts sections of stairwells back into models, creating a life-sized typology of severed spaces. Marking the sequence of the alphabet in which the artist's initials appear, the exhibition's title - HIJK - is also the result of a cut; not into built surroundings but the variable space of language.

Two architectonic sculptures create an axis through the exhibition. Identical in scale and colour, they are modeled on two different domestic interiors and bookend the gallery’s stairwell. Devoid of stairs, and presenting no above or below, the works take the form of gutted corridors, dislocated from their function as a transition between floors. Instead of appearing as passages connected to one another, the slight differences between their dimensions and details mark the works out as elements within a typology: they are specific, yet interchangeable parts. While they adopt certain tropes of Minimalism – the reductive geometry, the monochrome white surface, the scaling to the human body – the works equally evoke the planar designs of digital renderings, seemingly outputted without haptic qualities. Connected only to absent places, these sculptures are suspended in an architectural uncanny between model and fragment, lived space and prototype.

While the sculptures reframe the gallery's internal circulation, Kassay presents a series of wall paintings which present a single, unvarying color at a distance. Upon approach, their uniformity dissolves into an amalgam of extremely fine, multi-coloured particles of atomized paint. In this gradient shift from total opacity into pixellated surface, Kassay foregrounds the mechanics of resolution and embodied perception, where an image's coherence is relative to one's position.

Without the boundary of a stretcher or taped edge, the paint diffuses into space, turning the wall into something that is watched rather than seen. Like his earlier silvered canvases, the atomized paintings stage an active encounter with their audience, requiring the viewer to move towards and retreat from their surfaces in order to gauge the perceptual shifts that occur in relation to proximity. Thickening our experience of space, the exhibition becomes an apparatus with which we apprehend the work and plot a point of calibration for our somatic senses.

Jacob Kassay was born in Lewiston, New York, in 1984. He received his BFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo and lives and works in Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions include Untitled (disambiguation), The Kitchen, New York (2013); Jacob Kassay, Protocinema, Istanbul, Turkey (2013); No Goal, The Power Station, Dallas (2012) and the ICA, London (2011). The presentation of his work at the Collezione Maramotti in Italy in 2010 received great attention. He first exhibited at Xavier Hufkens in a group show in 2011.

Other Works by Jacob Kassay

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Untitled by Jacob Kassay contemporary artwork mixed media

Jacob Kassay Untitled, 2011 Acrylic and silver deposit on canvas
122 x 122 cm
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About the Artist

Jacob Kassay was born in Buffalo, New York in 1984 and earned his BFA at The State University of Buffalo in 2005. He currently lives in Los Angeles. Kassay’s work focuses on situating objects according to their spatial limits while emphasising the experience of their provisional duration in an exhibition. In Kassay’s work, the surface and support of painting merge into a cohesive object through the process of electroplating. As achromatic objects, their qualities and tonalities are dependent upon not only the canvases themselves but the reflection of their ambient surroundings.

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About the Gallery

Xavier Hufkens is one of Europe’s leading galleries for contemporary art. Located in Brussels, the gallery maintains a diverse exhibition programme with solo exhibitions of the gallery artists as well as group exhibitions and special projects. The gallery deals in a distinctive combination of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video and installation-based work.

The origins of the gallery date back to 1987, when Xavier Hufkens opened a gallery space in an un-refurbished warehouse in the neighbourhood of the South Station (Midi) in Brussels. During the early years, the focus of the gallery was upon mid-career and emerging artists and the gallery is known for having introduced some of the most influential contemporary artists to Brussels at a time when they were still relatively unknown. British sculptor Antony Gormley, who is still affiliated with the gallery, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Rosemarie Trockel all showed in Belgium for the first time with Xavier Hufkens (Gormley in 1987; Gonzalez-Torres in 1991 and Trockel in 1993).

In 1992, the gallery moved to a 19^th-century townhouse at 6 rue Saint-Georges, close to the Avenue Louise. Completely renovated by Belgian architects Paul Robbrecht, Hilde Daem and Marie-José Van Hee, the house quickly gained a reputation for being not just one of the most beautiful contemporary art spaces in the Belgian capital, but also one of the most interesting. The expanded exhibition programme coincided with the additional representation of a number of established artists from Belgium and abroad, including Richard Artschwager, Thierry De Cordier and Jan Vercruysse. In 1997, Hufkens expanded the gallery further by annexing the adjacent building and a number of new artists joined the gallery, including Louise Bourgeois, Roni Horn and Thomas Houseago.

A second space in the same street, at 107 rue Saint-Georges, opened in spring 2013. Located in the Galerie Rivoli, a mixed-use commercial development from the 1970s, the new gallery space was designed by Swiss architect Harry Gugger, who was previously in partnership with Herzog and De Meuron. Slegten & Toegemann, Brussels, managed the project.

An eclectic but very clear vision underpins all of the gallery’s activities: ‘The definition of the gallery was established from the start. The common thread, then and now, is quality over and above everything else, which I find more intellectually challenging than a forced definition. From the early days I juxtaposed established artists such as Michelangelo Pistoletto with someone like Felix Gonzalez-Torres when he was totally unknown. Today I still mix my work: I have no problem showing Malcolm Morley … alongside Robert Ryman, or Willem de Kooning.’ [Xavier Hufkens in The Art Newspaper, Issue 220, January 2011, published online: 20 January 2011]

Xavier Hufkens represents some thirty artists from different generations. He was part of the six-member selection committee for Art Basel during seven years and also participates in up to five international Arts Fairs annually. The gallery has partnerships with the estates of Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning, Robert Mapplethorpe and Alice Neel.

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Address

107 rue St-Georges
St-Jorisstraat
Brussels
Belgium

Opening Hours

Tuesday – Saturday
11am – 6pm

Xavier Hufkens

107 rue St-Georges, St-Jorisstraat, Brussels, Belgium

+32 263 967 30
http://www.xavierhufkens.com

Opening hours

Tuesday – Saturday
11am – 6pm

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