Interview: Luis Jacob

Artist: Luis Jacob
Exhibit Name: Pictures at an Exhibition
Gallery: MOCCA
Dates: Feb 04, 2011 – Mar 27, 2011
Interviewed by: Michael Hansen
Aired on ArtSync: 11 February 2011

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Luis Jacob’s retrospective is a touring exhibition that changes form at each stop. The show came to Toronto from Montreal’s Foundry Darling; top left, an installation view of that show, called Tableaux Vivants.

Jacob’s current show at MoCCA is called Pictures at an Exhibition. The title borrows the name of a ten-movement piano suite by Modest Mussorgsky, conceived in 1874 as an imaginary tour of an art collection. The piece was a tribute to the work of Victor Hartmann; one of those works, “Paris Catacombs”, is shown bottom left.

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“Every artist has to be able to construct a language with what they do… whether that’s gestures of paint on canvas, gestures on video, as a performance…” (Jacob 3:56). Top right, “They Sleep with One Eye Open #1″, 2009 (Acrylic on Rayon). Bottom right, video still from “A Dance for Those of Us Whose Hearts Have Turned to Ice, Based on the Choreography of Françoise Sullivan and the Sculpture of Barbara Hepworth (with Sign Language Supplement)”.

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The “Album X” installation considers, in Jacob’s words “how we create a picture within a gallery. So what we’ve done is…constructed a gallery within a gallery” (6:59).

At top left, installation view of “Album X”, void of viewers. Bottom left, figures contemplate voids in “Album X” detail.

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-H.W.

Click on images for original source.