Jay Gard. Zeichen unter Zeichen

About

Since man stood upright and began walking this earth, literally “holding his heads up”, he became homo videns, a person who has the overview, a person who sees. Above all this upright position freed his arms and legs so he was able to wave and signal, thus he became the homo signum dans, a person who can give signs. People have been giving and receiving signs since thousands of years. This process has been accelerating this last century until our day: Humans in the age of information.

In “Zeichen unter Zeichen” (signs among signs) Jay Gard explores the sign language of humans, the icon, the pictogram, and the emergence and the development of signs. Since humans do not just wave or signal with hands but instead have always been marking and designating objects, we are surrounded by signs and the signified in the object world. To some extent signs in their turn refer to already well-known and internalized signs. In „Zeichen unter Zeichen“ Jay Gard shows installations, sculptures and signs. 

Signs do not just occur through precise signaling but —since they are anchored in the collective unconscious— also through the environment they are in and through inversion, through what has been left out, the void, the open space. In sculpture, the drawing (the outline) becomes what has been left out, the omission. Through these cavities, the whole body changes.

Jay Gard established a distinctive, unmistakable language of his own in recent years and is among the young independent positions that continue the legacy of artists such as Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd or Richard Artschwager. In a new world. In a world of “Zeichen unter Zeichen”.