Billy Jacobs - Trace Evidence

About

“Secrets are an exalted state, almost a dream state.
They're a way of arresting motion, stopping the world so we can see ourselves in it.” ― Don DeLillo, Libra

Jacobs is preoccupied with the dark dusty neglected corners of historical crimes and misdemeanors. This group of paintings are inspired by recent revelations and admissions demonstrating the CIA's intense interest in Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  

Research over the past decade by writers like Jefferson Morley, Mary Haverstick, David Talbot, and, most recently in New York Magazine, Scott Sayare, have shown, through the Agency’s own recently declassified documents, that the CIA had been surveilling and interacting with Oswald prior to the assassination, and then covered up this contact after the assassination.   Jacobs restages the crimes in his paintings, and illustrates the blurred lines between the facts and the mythology.

Billy Jacobs (b. 1985 Boston, Massachusetts) received a BFA from Parsons School of Design and his MFA from New York University in 2017. He has exhibited at Marlborough Chelsea, New York; FALSE FLAG, Queens, NY; Theodore: Art, Brooklyn, NY; RAG Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Jacobs has also participated in the SWAB Barcelona Art Fair. In 2019 his installation, House Arrest, at NADAHouse on Governor’s Island was reviewed by The Art Newspaper.