Jason Reppert: Parlor Tricks
Oct 8 – Oct 30, 2011
Opening Reception: October 8th, 2011 7PM-10PM
Where Are you Going, Where Have You Been” 2010
Open Source Gallery presents Jason Reppert’s Parlor Tricks, a group of narratively driven sculptural objects. Each distinct, yet formally and conceptually interconnected, object together create a Meta narrative of their own. Materials from rubber to wood were used to construct these pieces, including the use of certain “found” and recognizable object, and the work retains a loose, formal continuity. Although he relies on his own phantasmagoria and poetics, the literary form of the short story, especially that of author Flannery O’Connor, has influenced Reppert.
Unlike much contemporary sculpture, Reppert’s constructions are of modest scale and only achieve their full effect when mounted on the wall. The use of the wall to display these objects has an isolating effect, removing them from interaction with other environmental elements and leaving them to function on their own. There is a conflicted relationship between these objects and the wall, with which they seem comfortable yet poised for escape. The raw materiality of the objects makes them something quite their own.
Reppert states that: “The work I construct is the result of a longstanding preoccupation with a visual expression of the pathos and anxiety underlying the values, aspirations and ideologies of American culture. I do all of this using a quasi-narrative approach. However, the construction of the work is a very fluid process. Even if I was inspired by a specific idea or event, it is through the process of creating a piece that reinterpretation occurs, which leads to digression, mixed messages, etc.” Reppert’s intimately sized, mildly grotesque forms often leave the viewer with a nameless sense of mild discomfort
Mattress Study, 2011
Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.
– Flannery O’Connor
