Jacob Kassay. H-L

About

Whether walking up the stairs or reaching in the cabinet, through the daily repetition of the same surroundings, domestic space is where haptic sense develops then sediments, conditioning the body’s motor skills to automatically navigate and interface without assessing its environment. Kassay's new sculptures explore these systems in which architecture both latently shapes and eludes conscious sense. This rote coding of gestures causes the awareness of one’s surroundings to slowly erode, with familiarity superseding reflection. Thickening the peripheral features and interstices of interior space that are routinely used but disregarded, Kassay reframes how attention is built into its surroundings.

Three architectonic sculptures within the exhibition terminate in dead ends and reroute one’s circulation through the gallery. Modeled on separate stairwells at 1:1 scale, these works present corridors whose connective function is severed, neither ascending nor descending.  These disconnected passages form a series of transitions that hover in an architectural uncanny, somewhere between model and fragment, calculated rendering and lived space.
 
Railings are affixed along the gallery wall, framing it as a transited space.  These supports are lined with Braille characters without syntax, extruding the eponymous letters of the exhibition - H for one, L for the other. This fixed-scale language communicates nothing other than prehensible vocalizations: embedded sighs and inaudible drones which trail off into space.