FRIBOURG.- What we see: an orchestrated chaos of tipped-out silver, yarn, bird food, plastic buckets, vitamin supplements, pollen, sawdust, cables, and other things. It seems as if the placement of the objects was done incidentally. Residues of all kinds have collected in the rooms, like flotsam washed onto a shore by the water. It remains unclear whether all of this was done deliberately or, instead, through idleness and negligence. Can one really be distinguished from the other, if we accept that a form arises not only through active doing but also through passive activity—by receiving things and letting them happen? Life shows us that the events that transpire are far more than a simple chain of cause and effect. At times, it seems as if things fall into place in their own mysterious way. In this exhibition, it is sometimes no more than a gust of wind from an open door that rearranges the things on display, just as our mere physical presence causes the sculptural configuration within the space to change and shift.
Jason Dodge’s practice emanates from the idea that everything is contained within everything else, and that our emotional and spiritual existence can be found in the tiniest granular fragments of the material world. The objects strewn across the floor create a quiet trace of absent (non-)human presences while also reminding us that we are present in the world as bodies as well as minds—that our existence is made up of organic, toxic, concrete, fleeting, and emotional substances and far more besides. There are moments in the exhibition when an absence (and a vacuum of meaning) manifests itself—such as when a physical vacancy and a cut appear in place of a title—while at others the things suddenly become alive and present and a concrete memory, a feeling, or a clear image emerges. In the movement between appearance and disappearance, the exhibition feels at once both very concrete and very abstract.
In a further sense, it also speaks of the desire and potential to effect a change in frequency. We might think of the ways in which quotidian words take on new and self-willed meaning in a poem. Isolated from their usual context of use, rearranged on a blank page in stanzas and verses, they take on a different emotional hue that goes far beyond the known and familiar. Jason Dodge’s poetics, by contrast, is one without words; a haptic, sculptural poetics that uses layering, densification, emptiness, concealment, and disclosure to shift the tonality of spaces and things. Moods and tempers condense in this strange and immersive landscape alongside the remainders of silver, chamomile leaves, wood, and the empty sound of flickering lamps.
As part of the exhibition, Jason Dodge will invite other poets and writers to gather for readings at the Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg, relating his work to poetic kinship and long-term friendship.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication edited by Jason Dodge and Kathrin Bentele.
Curated by Kathrin Bentele.
Jason Dodge (b. 1969) lives on Møn in Denmark. He has been exhibiting his works in galleries, museums, biennials, Kunsthallen, and project spaces since the 1990s. His recent exhibitions include presentations at the Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (2024); at Mudam, Musée d’Art Moderne, Luxembourg (Tomorrow, I walked to a dark black star, 2024); at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACRO), Rome (Cut a Door in the Wolf, 2021); and at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin (A work for no public audience, 2020). His work will also appear as part of Manifesta 16 Ruhr, Essen. In 2012, Jason Dodge founded the poetry press Fivehundred places, which regularly publishes work by contemporary poets.
