Luis Jacob
UB ART GALLERIES
A white sculpture of a headless male nude occupies one end of Anderson Gallery’s second-floor atrium space. Aloft on an ornate white pedestal, his fingers are ostentatiously locked in a frame. In Sphinx, Luis Jacob humorously mobilizes a “classic” representation of the body to critique the Western ideal of beauty by asking, squarely, who is looking. The sculpture indicts art’s ideological complicity in limiting the idea and ideal of the body, which has had dire material and psychical impact on countless other bodies rendered marginal. The framing gesture asserts that images are merely and inherently fragments. It warningly suggests that our heads are always filled with images. It also infers that consuming images may dangerously stand in for thought. Sphinx invites us to increase our awareness of the power of looking and of our agency while looking. If our head is ours to fill, what will we let in? How does hospitality transact between bodies and images?
Nearby, Album XI’s forty humble panels line a wall, taking viewers on a visual journey through the dominant narrative of twentieth-century art, which has also been shaped by the photographic frame. It invites us to ponder what escapes imaging, what may lie between the panels, filling in the gaps in the image sequence, how we are positioned as viewers—in the images as well as in the exhibition itself—and how frameworks inform meaning.
BIOGRAPHY
Luis Jacob is a Toronto-based artist whose work destabilizes viewing conventions and invites collisions of meaning. Since participating in documenta12 in 2007, he has achieved an international reputation—with exhibitions at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria (2019); Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Germany (2019); Toronto Biennial of Art (2019); La Biennale de Montréal (2016); Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2015); Taipei Biennial (2012); Generali Foundation, Vienna (2011); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); Hamburg Kunstverein (2008) and the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (2008).
PROGRAMS
Luis Jacob
UB ART GALLERIES
A white sculpture of a headless male nude occupies one end of Anderson Gallery’s second-floor atrium space. Aloft on an ornate white pedestal, his fingers are ostentatiously locked in a frame. In Sphinx, Luis Jacob humorously mobilizes a “classic” representation of the body to critique the Western ideal of beauty by asking, squarely, who is looking. The sculpture indicts art’s ideological complicity in limiting the idea and ideal of the body, which has had dire material and psychical impact on countless other bodies rendered marginal. The framing gesture asserts that images are merely and inherently fragments. It warningly suggests that our heads are always filled with images. It also infers that consuming images may dangerously stand in for thought. Sphinx invites us to increase our awareness of the power of looking and of our agency while looking. If our head is ours to fill, what will we let in? How does hospitality transact between bodies and images?
Nearby, Album XI’s forty humble panels line a wall, taking viewers on a visual journey through the dominant narrative of twentieth-century art, which has also been shaped by the photographic frame. It invites us to ponder what escapes imaging, what may lie between the panels, filling in the gaps in the image sequence, how we are positioned as viewers—in the images as well as in the exhibition itself—and how frameworks inform meaning.
BIOGRAPHY
Luis Jacob is a Toronto-based artist whose work destabilizes viewing conventions and invites collisions of meaning. Since participating in documenta12 in 2007, he has achieved an international reputation—with exhibitions at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria (2019); Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Germany (2019); Toronto Biennial of Art (2019); La Biennale de Montréal (2016); Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2015); Taipei Biennial (2012); Generali Foundation, Vienna (2011); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); Hamburg Kunstverein (2008) and the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (2008).