Jon Sasaki at Jessica Bradley Gallery (1450 Dundas West), to March 16. 416-537-3125. Rating: NNNN
How much do our notions about art interfere with art? In his most recent solo show, Jon Sasaki brings his peculiar brand of shoulder-shrugging conceptualism to Jessica Bradley, exhibiting a wide array of multidisciplinary works in video, installation, photography and painting.
Sasaki is less a burning visionary than a wary interloper stumbling accidentally into the sublime.
There is an underlying note of humour, too. In Bacterial Swabs From The Palette Of Frederick Varley, he incubated samples lifted from the palette of the famed Group of Seven painter on petri dishes. The resulting photographs of luxuriant mould blooms play cheekily with notions of “culture” while looking intriguingly like textured landscapes.
In the video Interactions, Sasaki ambles through a hilly landscape overturning large rocks, peering at whatever is crawling underneath. It seems like a bored adolescent ritual, yet as the camera zooms in on the teeming surfaces, we’re gripped by an irresistible, childlike curiosity.
We Are Made Of Star Stuff is another exercise in the random giving way to something cosmic. Sasaki has blasted confetti at an ink-black surface on the gallery ceiling, making it stick in starry constellations. It’s a fun juvenile gesture – the artist asks, “How much is going to stick?” – that happens to resemble the night sky.
Sasaki investigates the way abstract labels, paradigms and assumed reactions never fully encompass the naked complexity of the moment. The magic, he seems to be saying, is in the banal.
art@nowtoronto.com
