Jacqueline Hassink @ Benrubi Gallery

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Jacqueline Hassink @ Benrubi Gallery

May 18th, 2018 by fstop

Onoaida 8, Yakushima, Japan, 2016

Jacqueline Hassink: Unwired
June 1 – August 17 , 2018

“For the photographs in Unwired, Hassink traveled as far afield as Yakushima, an island in the extreme south of Japan, and Svalbaard, a Norwegian island near the Polar Circle. The landscapes are an intense study in blues and greens, by turns vivid and subdued, and shifting perspectives and horizon lines, some immeasurably vast, others foreshortened by curtains of vegetation. The contrasts make the viewer acutely conscious both of his or her body and its relationship to space. If the immediate effect is isolating, it gradually relaxes into the sense of being part of a different kind of network, global in the most literal sense of being “of the earth.” This feeling carries over into the exhibition’s two interiors, both of which emphasize the viewer’s perspective and the experience of looking, as well as the natural processes of decay and dilapidation. The message is clear: the things people make can be beautiful and useful, but they’re temporary. On the one hand, this reflects an awareness mono no aware, the Japanese aesthetic of the awareness of impermanence, but when we relate it back to the threatened environments in the landscapes we see a more pointed critique of an industrialized society.”

Benrubi Gallery
521 West 26th Street, Floor 2

Location: New York, New York City, United States Type: Exhibition

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