Irina Jasnowski Pascual
Solo exhibition: “Sonic Prolapse”
March 18th - April 24th
Opening: Thursday, March 18, 4 pm to 8 pm
Kai Matsumiya presents Sonic Prolapse, Irina Jasnowski Pascual’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. The title denotes an element, sound, falling or slipping out from the constructed metallic mannequins and scenes throughout the space, as though externalizing an interiority. Other elements utilize movement, viscosity, and light to displace, reconstruct, and interweave energy between the works. Each plays a precarious, orgiastic, and psychological game of substituting their parts for the construction of the whole.
The show’s cast of characters are comprised of steel rods pared-down to assume base skeletal forms, bookended by lascivious fragmentary features, speakers for orifices, and glitzy accessories. The central staging features two figures in and around a clear acrylic basin filled with water and squid ink. The reflective properties of squid ink, a device used by its maker to obfuscate and evade, forms a glossy flat surface not unlike the Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) which enable visual imagery for present-day technologies. Here, the crouching figure thrusts forward with the force of motor-powered disgorgement, while the recirculation of the fountain reanimates its spewing progressively as water is lost.
The other figure, a watchful one, plays back a recording from its affixed speaker: a sound of faintly gushing liquid, asynchronized, like a false echo of its own entertainment. Through a line of copper conductive wire this sound travels to the second gallery, resonating inside a laundry drum, distorting the echo even further. In the artist’s words: “The sounds dematerialize from the constant gurgling into a rhythmic composition resembling music–without an image to reinforce, it becomes a soundtrack to a scene we scramble to improvise in our minds. Diegetic dribbling reverberates from the steel and aluminum walls of the drum, and the sound revolves constantly in form and content.”
Parts-to-be-replaced-by-something-else run the gamut of contemporary anxiety, and from it a beckoning hopeful future. The constituent elements may be conduits for electrical or auditory conductivity–found tiffany glass shards, grape stems eaten during the installation, and crafted glassworks resembling abstracted organs or delicate chains. Each piece may be substituted for the betterment or the further deterioration of each work.
In the dimly lit back of the gallery, a suspended facial mesh is continuously lit by a hanging bulb mechanism, casting a shadow that moves slightly with the current of visitors’ movements through the space. The shadow moves in and out of focus like a troubling reflection that obscures to only reveal the contours of the mesh. This mesh, a physical analog, suggests an invisible backdrop for the dynamic cobwebs of digital visual manifestations, but lives alongside its produced shadowed image.
Two drawings hang illuminated only by motion sensor lights. A flute player overlaid by her inverted reflection. Wind instrumentalists extend breath into space, air into sound, and with the speakers, the electrical current becomes sound. The artist’s rendition of a diagram describes the invisible function of the inner-self (heartbeat, circulation, respiration and the activities of the brain and nervous system) was made in early April 2020 when physical movement was restricted while we were contending with both the machine-like qualities of the body and our very own emotional lives.
Irina Jasnowski Pascual (b. 1989) lives and works in New York City. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2017. Her studio practice extends into video and performance through collaboration with Tyler Berrier. In April she will begin a residency at AAIR Antwerp to complete a video collaboration with Harald Thys and twelve members from École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where she will also edit her first full-length feature Mystic Movie. Past exhibitions include Set Ups: Lighting for Character Dangling Over Void at Interstate Projects, Brooklyn NY; Bathroom/Bathhouse, with Agata Ingarden at Mx Gallery, Manhattan NY; Suicidio Sociale with Tyler Berrier at Etablissement d’en Face in Brussels, BE.
The gallery and artist would like to thank Jordan Barse for co-curating, Ruairidh MacLeod for the help, and Tyler Berrier for literally everything!