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For “IT,” Jacob Kassay’s first solo present in Scotland, the front-door body of Ivory Tars is plastered with two tiny adhesive labels, every marked with one of many titular letters in each a slanted print font and braille. The stickers exude a minuscule however decided presence. From the gallery exterior, you possibly can catch the flickering of the lights inside, although the frosted glass of the home windows interferes with notion, so that you just virtually second-guess the impact, like the primary glimpse of lightning in a storm.
Inside, the starkness is jarring. The bulbs within the gallery’s ceiling lighting observe flash haphazardly, whereas OSB boards are fitted into architectural recesses inside the partitions. Kassay has photographed these panels and printed the pictures again on their surfaces with a slight however deliberate misalignment. This straightforward gesture confuses the attention, triggering the viewer to understand motion the place there may be none. The phantasm is so intense you possibly can virtually hear your mind whirring: There’s nothing in its database to course of this.
Within the again house of the gallery, a lit candle is suspended near the ground, held in place by a steel clamp that appears like it could have been borrowed from a faculty science experiment. When the energy of the flame fluctuates (normally due to air displaced by somebody strolling across the gallery or by the front-door opening), it prompts a sensor skilled on the candle, which in flip impacts the gallery lights.
With these interventions (all thought-about components of a single set up, IT, 2023), Kassay digs additional into his ongoing investigations into the act of wanting, whereas additionally leaning into the liveness of the gallery. The interplay requires one thing so innately human. Are the artwork objects and their hierarchy ineffective with out an observer? Does one thing should be seen to exist? That is an everlasting, existential query, one which Kassay addresses by means of small gestures that evoke vital bodily reactions.
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