Opening Reception & Artist's Talk
Friday, Sept 16 @ 7pm
Exhibition continues through October 28

Toronto artist Jon Sasaki will present two new works at Hallwalls, connected (metaphorically, conceptually) in quixotic and humorous ways, each highlighting the currency of electrically-engaged imagery and objects. Where one work leans into its own hapless and foolhardy depictions, the other quietly evokes and eloquent, poetic sphere.

Improvised Travel Adapters is a series of photographs documenting pragmatic, temporary sculptures dynamically rife with dangerous and foolish maneuvers. In the series, objects commonly carried by travelers are repurposed—that repurposing invariably finds them jammed into live outlets to complete a circuit between plugs and sockets that would otherwise not fit together. Unerringly humorous, these inventive gestures transform over time—and the repetition of one frightening proposition after another—into dangerous set pieces. They simultaneously speak to a MacGyver inventiveness, a bold style of problem-solving, and the worst ideas ever. Rife with the possibility of the tragicomic, Improvised Travel Adapters remind that the thrill of actual danger is only ever a few, simple gestures away.

As a kind of reprieve from the Improvised Travel Adapters horrific hilarity, a corner of the exhibitioin space will present A Constellation For Every Person On Earth, which harkens back over a hundred years to the 1901 Pan American Exposition held in Buffalo and its thrilling presentation of 20,000 8-watt bulbs strewn across the grounds of the exposition. In Sasaki's homage to that thrilling historical moment, thirty-three bulbs will be strung across a portion of the gallery in the manner of patio lights and computer-controlled to cycle through every possible combination for thirty-three bulbs—8,589,934,592—illuminated for 5-10 seconds. This figure roughly corresponds to the number of people on earth today and even more closely matches population projections for a decade from now.

As Sasaki suggests about the installation:

"The piece would invite a multitude of free-associations. Visitors might envision constellations of stars, and attempt to "connect the dots" as humans have done for eons. They might take the opportunity to think about chance, randomness, uniqueness in our genetic makeup, the nature of individuality; they might contemplate the disparity between human and geological timescales, the vastness of the cosmos, exponential population growth and so on and so on. And possibly they might give some thought to the Pan-American Exhibition of 1901, where Nikola Tesla visited in order to see the illuminations that he helped create. Apparently, according to some accounts, his mind was already on the next project… finding a way to communicate with any inhabitants of the planet Mars.1 So as Tesla was looking at Buffalo's electric lights, his imagination was transposing them to the celestial sphere, bulbs became stars and distant planetary destinations for his messages. He was reaching out to the new individuals he hoped to encounter there… an exchange that would not happen in his transitory lifetime."

A third work—which provides the exhibition both its emphatic pathos as well as its title—borrows its name from Henry David Thoreau's notion that "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion." A small grouping of "airdancers" seated on a pumpkin gently shimmying with their internal breeze (rather than flailing about with wild gyrations) and evoking contradictory allusions—participants of a lively party or a cramped restless throng. In a post-pandemic moment, where we remain uncertain about both the distance and the social and how these might be realigned, Sasaki's figures are seeking the comfort zone between the hazards of improvised travel adapters and the wonders of a twinklilng night sky.

www.jonsasaki.com

Some publications related to this event:
Jon Sasaki - I Would Rather Share A Pumpkin Than Be Lonely On A Velvet Cushion - 2022