Works by Jasper Spicero
Film by Jasper Spicero and Wills Baker
Curated by Wills Baker/Tiffany Zabludowicz
Times Square Space
New York, NY
June 18–September 1, 2018
Film by Jasper Spicero and Wills Baker
Curated by Wills Baker/Tiffany Zabludowicz
Times Square Space
New York, NY
June 18–September 1, 2018
THE GLADY DAY
Times Square Space presents a new film by Jasper Spicero, The Glady Day, made in collaboration with Wills Baker, during the artist's three-month residency at TSS from March to June 2018. The film appears in the same space it was made and in the context of its setting. In concert with it are sculptures by the artist created over the past three years. The exhibition is curated by Wills Baker and Tiffany Zabludowicz. Spicero, was born in 1990 in South Dakota, he lives and works in Brooklyn and has had exhibitions at museums and galleries around the world, including solo exhibitions at Johann Berrgren Galery, Malmo, SW, New Galerie, Paris, FR, and Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris, FR.
Each of the sculptural objects contains a personality or utility, which function toward the personal transformation of a teenager named Glady Day. In the film, he faces reconciling a past trauma by participating in a therapeutic program attached to his school. During the run of the program, the initiate meets a series of proctor guides and faces challenges that help him escape projections, which afflict his consciousness. Operating in the logic of video games, Glady must transit levels of increasingly painful tests to reach clarity and regain his personal power. The audience is asked to navigate the same experience.
Spicero's work considers institutions that mark one's life. Schools, corporate offices hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and prisons, each manipulate, control, and change their occupants. Integrated into the work are paintings made by prisoners incarcerated at the Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, 1976. The works were products of an inmate enrichment program lead by Kanas landscape painter, David Melby. As objects, they are both a record of rehabilitative pathways for the incarcerated and extensions of Spicero's conflation of the prison metaphor.
The tactility of Spicero's objects and sensitivity of their hand-made construction appeal to the child while containing the roadmap for reintegrating the conflicted adult subject. Both the paintings and sculptures exist as tools and representations of the symbolic and metaphysical act of transformative process and rehabilitation. They highlight the innate ability of the human mind to reach beyond its physical confines towards innocence and consolidation.
Each of the sculptural objects contains a personality or utility, which function toward the personal transformation of a teenager named Glady Day. In the film, he faces reconciling a past trauma by participating in a therapeutic program attached to his school. During the run of the program, the initiate meets a series of proctor guides and faces challenges that help him escape projections, which afflict his consciousness. Operating in the logic of video games, Glady must transit levels of increasingly painful tests to reach clarity and regain his personal power. The audience is asked to navigate the same experience.
Spicero's work considers institutions that mark one's life. Schools, corporate offices hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and prisons, each manipulate, control, and change their occupants. Integrated into the work are paintings made by prisoners incarcerated at the Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, 1976. The works were products of an inmate enrichment program lead by Kanas landscape painter, David Melby. As objects, they are both a record of rehabilitative pathways for the incarcerated and extensions of Spicero's conflation of the prison metaphor.
The tactility of Spicero's objects and sensitivity of their hand-made construction appeal to the child while containing the roadmap for reintegrating the conflicted adult subject. Both the paintings and sculptures exist as tools and representations of the symbolic and metaphysical act of transformative process and rehabilitation. They highlight the innate ability of the human mind to reach beyond its physical confines towards innocence and consolidation.
THE GLADY DAY