Jacob Kassay - Contemporary Art Part I New York Monday, November 7, 2011 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Eleven Rivington, New York
    Sorry We're Closed, Brussels

  • Exhibited

    Brussels, Sorry We're Closed, Jacob Kassay, June - August, 2010

  • Catalogue Essay

    Jacob Kassay’s training in photography evokes the inspiration for his alchemical creative process in Untitled, 2010. The many stages of Kassay’s technique echo the development of a negative into an actualized photo: he first covers the canvas in a white acrylic base, then, akin to the soaking stage of a glossy photograph, he employs the technique of electroplating. This process crystallizes the acrylic elements in the painting, rendering the canvas with a mirror-like surface. Yet for all its industrious transformations, the surface is not without its fragilities; any edges of canvas left untouched by the white acrylic leave subtly burned areas, standing in direct contrast to the surrounding areas of dazzling silver.

    Though his surface is opaque, Kassay’s metallic finish plays delightfully with incoming light, delivering us beautiful yet imperfect impressions of color and movement. Here we witness a performative aspect to the work, as the coloring and appearance of the work alter with the viewer’s position. In addition, the Minimalist aspect of the painting’s chromatic scheme gives this stirringly introspective and haunting piece a unique hybrid status in terms of its relationship to art history. Though it hearkens back to Andy Warhol’s Oxidation series, Gerhard Richter’s Photo Paintings, and Rudolf Stingel’s metallic surfaces, Untitled, 2010 is in a class of its own: ephemeral and permanent, distortive and reflective.

PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION

45

Untitled

2010
acrylic and silver deposit on canvas
48 x 36 in. (121.9 x 91.4 cm)
Signed and dated “Kassay 10” on the overlap and on the reverse.

Estimate
$80,000 - 120,000 

Sold for $206,500

Contemporary Art Part I

7 November 2011
New York