Jay Gard - We Built This City

About

At the center of the exhibition is the almost four-meter-high sculpture "Sanssouci (Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, Sanssouci Palace)" originally designed by Jay Gard for the Potsdam urban space. It was shown for the first time from September 4 to 19, 2020 as part of the Transformale  around the "Rechenzentrum Kunst- und Kreativhaus Potsdam", where it contrasts with the architecture of the 1950s ("East Modern") and the reconstructive and restorative tendencies of the younger ones Architecture had to assert. Now it stands in the interior of a monument of classical modernism and deals with questions of aesthetic and social appropriation. 

Jay Gard, Sanssouci (Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, Sanssouci Palace), 2020, poplar plywood, lacquer, metal, screws, 399 x 180 x 140 cm, © Jay Gard, VG Bild-Kunst Bonn 2020

The forms suspended in the scaffolding are quotes and paraphrases that the artist derived from the baroque representational architecture of the Hohenzollern Palace. According to a title syntax developed by the artist, the architect Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff (1699-1753) is named as the author of the palace construction. The outline of the floor plan of the central building can be seen in two versions, a straightening that refers to the colourfulness of the facade, a kind of rococo flourish as well as two pointed elements that can be explained as a reflection of the lattice architecture of the turquoise-colored arcades in front of the side wings of the Castle and go back to von Knobelsdorff's designs. The works also shown in the IG Metall exhibition room, "Sanssouci 1", have the same reference "Sanssouci 2" and "Sanssouci 3" (all 2017), in which the openings or omissions represent the actual motif and in which the artist chose architectural vocabulary as the starting point for his analytical creative process for the first time. The presentation is complemented by the original model of the large sculpture and two experimental preliminary studies.

Two color circles by the artist from the series of works that have been running since 2015 can also be seen. It is based on a reference to paintings by other artists. In the case of the exhibited works, it is the work “Bend Sinister” by Cecily Brown from 2002, from which Jay Gard extracted the various shades of color. The artist then transferred the color system obtained in this way to the relief structure of fan elements made of plywood, whereby the arrangement and frequency of the individual tones can vary, so that a painting can produce several color circles. 

The title of the exhibition project refers to the hit of the same name by the American band “Starship” from 1985 and, in the context of Jay Gard's work, is to be understood as an affirmation of craftsmanship.

(Text: Marc Wellmann)

IG Metall exhibition room
Alte Jakobstrasse 149
10969 Berlin
http://www.igmetall-bbs.de/

Opening times:
Mon - Thu from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Fri from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

free entry

Growing up in Karl-Marx-Stadt (today: Chemnitz), Jay Gard experienced his early childhood as the son of a textile designer and an industrial designer in the late years of the German Democratic Republic. After a few semesters at the University of Art and Design (Burg Giebichenstein) in Halle / Saale, Jay Gard worked from 2006 to 2008 in New York for the American artist Tom Sachs and in Berlin for Thomas Demand. He continued his studies in 2008 in Leipzig at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB) in the class for installation and space with Joachim Blank. Jay Gard has lived and worked in Berlin since 2012.