Artist: Jacob Robert Whibley
Exhibition title: beige mint
Venue: Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto, Canada
Date: November 14 – December 19, 2020
Photography: Toni Hafkenscheid / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Zalucky Contemporary
“…each moment is alive with different possibilities for the world’s becoming and different reconfigurings of what may yet be possible.”
– Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway
Spatiotemporal possibilities pervade in beige mint, Toronto-based artist Jacob Robert Whibley’s impressive second solo show at Zalucky Contemporary. The title (an anagram of ‘time being’) aptly and playfully points to the exhibition’s central theme: the destabilization of space and time through dynamic works that unsettle understandings of here and there, then and now.
While time figures prominently throughout Whibley’s body of work, beige mint represents a new phase in his practice through his intensified relationships with space and human movement. Inspired by desire paths, trails forged by the movement of bodies, Whibley treats space and time as malleable substances to shape, carve, manipulate, and reconfigure through what can be described as a dancerly approach to art making. Whibley’s linear collages, infused with the sensibili-ties of drawing, feature lively lines seemingly caught in the act. They threaten to undulate, criss-cross, collide, then ricochet across the gallery. His denser compositions protrude into the space, eliciting a tactile response as the eye sifts through deposits of time. Curiously, Whibley manages to capture the movement of bodies without recording the bodies themselves.
Collected over a span of nearly two decades, the materials used in beige mint chronicle Whibley’s own existence through the ‘stuff’ he has accumulated, beginning with a paper archive salvaged from a film prop studio in the early 2000s. Since then, he has continued to add to and draw from this archive, while also absorbing and reverently redeploying his own cut offs – the remnants, scraps, and negative spaces born from the collage process. Pieces in the show echo each other as well as Whibley’s earlier works, through source material that uncannily appears in multiple places and states at once.
– Erin McCurdy
Jacob Robert Whibley (b. 1978) is a Toronto-based artist who works predominantly in collage and sculpture. His practice roots through modernist art, architecture and design concepts to address issues of temporality, labour and technology. Whibley is a graduate of OCAD University and a former member of the Toronto art collective Team Macho. Recent exhibitions include dot-dot-dot at 8-11, Toronto (2017), imperfect aspect at Open Studio, Toronto (2016), all we ever wanted was everything at Narwhal Contemporary, Toronto (2015), Point and Duration at Bourouina Gallery, Berlin (2014), More than Two (Let it Make Itself) at The Power Plant, Toronto (2013) and Freedom of Assembly at Oakville Galleries, Oakville (2012). His work has been acquired by the RBC Collection, BMO Collection, TD Collection and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Jacob Robert Whibley, beige mint, 2020, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Jacob Robert Whibley, beige mint, 2020, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Jacob Robert Whibley, beige mint, 2020, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Jacob Robert Whibley, the ten wands works best as a coaster for a mug half full, 2020, wood, sand, oil and acrylic paint, 29 x 23.5 x 6 inches
Jacob Robert Whibley, chemin du désir, 2020, paper ephemera on panel, 24 x 22 inches (framed)
Jacob Robert Whibley, the distance between icebergs and anthills, 2020, paper ephemera on panel, 29 x 27 inches (framed)
Jacob Robert Whibley, omniscient observer, 2020, wood, sand, oil and acrylic paint, 18. 5 x 4.5 x 4.75 inches
Jacob Robert Whibley, cities sink so oceans can rise, 2019, paper ephemera on panel, 15.5 x 12.5 inches (framed)
Jacob Robert Whibley, we will take turns with the sun, 2019, paper ephemera on panel, 15.5 x 12.5 inches (framed)
Jacob Robert Whibley, precious meddles, 2020, wood, sand, oil and acrylic paint, 24 x 25 x 4.5 inches
Jacob Robert Whibley, precious meddles, 2020, wood, sand, oil and acrylic paint, 24 x 25 x 4.5 inches
Jacob Robert Whibley, beige mint, 2020, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Jacob Robert Whibley, beige mint, 2020, exhibition view, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto
Jacob Robert Whibley, nite lime & sand out of pearls, 2020, paper ephemera on panel, 22.75 x 21 inches (framed) each
