Something Rotten, 2020
A Clog in the Machine was an exhibition of paintings by Jack Kenna (b. 1994 in Colorado, USA), a visual artist working on the unceded land of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver, Canada).
Kenna engages with drawing, painting, sculpture, and writing, often blurring the boundaries between media. His works contain a visual vocabulary of objects and motifs that are repeated and reorganized from work to work so as to evolve and complicate meaning over time, utilizing 2- and 3-D media combined with found images, objects, or text.
Sprawling collections of derelict antiques, fragments of abandoned poetry on yellowing notebook paper, images sketched with a finger onto a dusty window - Kenna’s work provides an intimate look into domestic spaces and our relationship to the inanimate worlds we build around ourselves against the backdrop of home confinement. Curated by Asia Jong, who also happens to be the artist’s roommate, this exhibition explored isolation, productivity, over- and under-stimulation, and the interruption of ubiquitous systems brought on by the worldwide COVID-19 shutdown.
Jack Kenna (b. 1994 in Durango, Colorado), a visual artist working on unceded Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver, Canada). He co-founded Ground Floor Art Centre in 2018, a gallery and studio space created to provide more exhibition opportunities for early-emerging artists in Vancouver, and is currently an Artist-in-Residence with the Vancouver School Board for the 2020-2021 school year. Recent exhibitions include Platforms 2020: Public Works, commissioned by the City of Vancouver, and In Over Our Heads, a group exhibition at Franc Gallery, Vancouver. Jack holds a BFA from Emily Carr University 2019.
Curatorial Text by Asia Jong
After dinner, Jack and I realized we forgot to chop up the potato. Placing it on our window sill, we found it a week later overcome with small green sprouts poking out from its lumpy brown skin. We left our new little pet to sit and stew on the sill. Passing time turned poison into the talismanic protection swelling in the potato’s evil eyes. Our new amulet was working. The repelling of curses and absorption of bad spirits made the potato implode into an increasingly shriveled, deep green raisin. It was either decaying or growing, maybe both. But, eventually our good luck charm began to fester, and swirling forces beyond our control changed the world overnight. We were in lockdown. The potato no longer seemed to protect us from the acts of God that we’d been skirting for months on end. Mounds of garbage materialized in the yard and sewage leaked through the walls. After two years of protection, on the last night we spent in our house, we buried the potato, ceremoniously, next to the beets we’d never dig up.
A fortuitous craigslist ad turned Jack and I from strangers to fast friends and roommates to Covid companions, isolated for months in the shrunken microcosm of our tiny Strathcona house. The objects found in A Clog in the Machine chronicle the intensities and banalities of experiencing the worldly upheaval from the safety of our home. In the confines of our already small 1-bdrm-turned-2-bdrm residence, we experienced the walls shrinking around us. It could have been nice if we were actually living under a rock, but our gluttony for headlines and endless doom-scrolling made that impossible. The onset of redundancy and uncertainty made “what are you doing today?” the most dreaded question and post-meal cigarettes the most regarded ritual.
The entropy of the house assembled arrangements of touristy knick knacks, guilty indulgences, and those cool rocks I found while it was still acceptable to go to the beach. And after so many days staring at these accumulated objects, they seemed to take on their own roles in our home. The bookshelves and coffee tables, that were once burdened with messy piles and disarray, turned into the site of a materialist museum. Gifts from friends felt like monuments and trinkets started to make good company. Clutter adorned the corners of our rooms like altars of objects in a tacky temple. I wondered, “should I, like... be finding God?” seeking solace from the screen, as I prayed to the shrine of ornamental junk on my bedside table. I’d wait for the end of the day to take the 5 foot pilgrimage from the couch to the bathroom sink and pay respects to our blue porcelain doggie on my way to bed.
By Asia Jong
A Clog in the Machine in the Members’ Gallery, 2020.