Borna Sammak “Hey, You’re Part of It”

JTT

poster for Borna Sammak “Hey, You’re Part of It”
[Image: Borna Sammak "Frame For a Poster" (2018) poster and epoxy 48 x 34 x 5 in.]

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JTT presents Hey, You’re Part of It, Borna Sammak’s third solo show with the gallery.

Not Yet Titled (Couch) is a physical realization of Sammak’s early sketch practice, which he started in the 2000s after Google Sketchup was first released. In these sketches, Sammak would download a rendering of an existing object and add surfaces to it, duplicating the object on itself and pulling the surfaces into prismatic compositions. An example of this process is included in an untitled video from 2012 in which he contorted a digital rendering of the Guggenheim Museum, giving sharp edges to the otherwise round rotunda. Not Yet Titled (Couch) remains legible as a couch and is functional as a couch, but it doesn’t take function as its highest priority. The shape of the couch ricochets form and takes design to an extreme degree. This gratuitous approach is inspired by Wharton Esherick’s 1931 Fischer Corner desk, which cascades out of a corner in a duplicitous fashion like Duchamp’s nude descends a staircase. Esherick (1887-1870) was a sculptor who constructed highly angular and prismatic furniture inspired by German Expressionism and Cubism. In 1972, Esherick’s studio, which is located in Paoli, Pennsylvania and a few miles from where Sammak grew up, was converted into a museum.

Frame For a Poster embellishes a classic Jesús Malverde poster that Sammak found in South Brooklyn and has kept in his studio for many years. The word “frame” is meant to be a pun on both an actual picture frame and a compositional device that is employed within the poster itself. Sammak has made similar ourishes on the edges of his compositions previously, most notably in his video installations in which floral garnishes act as television frames. Jesús Malverde is a folk saint, though his life can not be verifed. It is said that he grew up under the rule of the Mexican technocratic dictator Porfrio Diaz, who served seven terms as President of Mexico — a total of three and a half decades. Diaz’s economic policies benefited only a few wealthy estate-owners and his circle of ally foreign investors. According to legend, Malverde became a bandit after the death of his parents, which he attributed to their poverty. His Batman-esque orphan rage manifests itself in Robin Hood-like deeds that involve stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. He eventually was nicknamed “Malverde” or “bad green” by his victims who came to equate their acquisition of wealth to misfortune so long as their paths’ crossed his. In the poster of Malverde featured in Frame For a Poster, his face turns downward with a weighted and forlorn expression.

Cool Road to the Beach presents a larger-than-life pair of beach flip flops that references a pair that Sammak found years ago. They were packaged in their original foam jig from which they were created. Sammak recreated this jig as shaped canvases and illustrated a dip-slip fault across all surfaces. This painting answers the question “why are any sandals this way?” with “why aren’t all sandals this way?”.

Not Yet Titled, 2018 is both a large shark infested pool and an experiment in painting. By layering embroidery and vinyl, Sammak attempts to create a depth of field in certain areas and flattening in others. This plastic color theory is also at work in Not Yet Titled, 2015, a collage of largemouth bass, great white sharks, and rainbow trout made from vinyl t-shirt graphics in a Hokusai-esque storm.

What Do People Do All Day is an oversized version of the popular children’s book by Richard Scarry. The confounding question of how people occupy their lives on a daily basis is asked through this silly version of the didactic encyclopedia made for kids. Hey, You’re Part of It takes its name from the 2002 song by Piebald. In the song, the narrator “walks the streets of a Carolina / Watching people pushing shopping carts / And there’s a guy above me / And he’s washing windows / Making ten bucks a pop / And he says to me … HEY! You’re part of it.”

Borna Sammak (b. 1986, Philadelphia, PA) lives and works in Brooklyn between the Food Bazaar on Manhattan Avenue and the Western Beef on Metropolitan Avenue. Solo exhibitions include those at a Best Buy on Broadway in 2009, JTT when it was on Suffolk Street in 2012 and in 2014, American Medium (owned by Dan Wallace, Travis Fitzgerald and Josh Pavlacky) in their Bed-Stuy location, Tanya Leighton in Berlin, and Sadie Coles in London all in 2016. His work has been included in group exhibitions including OVERPOP, Yuz Museum, Shanghai in 2016, curated by Jeffrey Deitch and Karen Smith, Transmission Legacies of the Television Age, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia in 2015, and Analogital, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City in 2013.

Media

Schedule

from April 29, 2018 to June 17, 2018

Opening Reception on 2018-04-29 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Borna Sammak

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