Jenny Gagalka at Good Weather

Adidas caps and LA Dodgers hats turned inside out and pressed against one another; pairs of sneakers tucked neatly, side-by-side. These staged arrangements become still lifes from where, at close range, the act of painting from observation happens.

An infamous acronym for ADIDAS is “All Day I Dream About Sex.” What follows (and/or precedes) when mirrored is, “Sometimes After Dinner, I Dream Again.” All day you dream about sex?, and then you stop for just a moment to eat? Then once you’re satiated, you dream again, but you don’t know what “I” am dreaming of. You’re dreaming about sex all day?! Shouldn’t you do that at night? It is a cycle, or a voracious appetite—if not an ad- diction—and it speaks to the process of painting. These objects of mass crass consump- tion are trance-like when encountered out in the world in a way that they (and the paint- ings, as well) pack too much material into a tight space, bursting at the seams.

By painting hats and shoes instead of wearing them, their desirability is under- scored. The hat paintings suggest a head first entrance. The shoe paintings beg to be filled, feet first. Somewhere in between is the body and it is seduced by these useful/used objects, bringing up notions of possession and feeling possessed by possessions.

Specular qualities and compositional doubling produces a funhouse mirror effect. Two hats piled on top of each other appear in the guise of fanatical fans, or jocular jocks with staring eyelets, gagged mouths, and a button nose. In the next painting, the very same object turns into another motif, where the aforementioned nose is now a nipple, but at the end of the day, is still a button. The back and forth process of exchange by working from direct observation results in the tension between perception and recognition, object and subject, in ways that make them appear paradoxical. The hats and shoes are contain- ers. They’re objects that contain shadows.

Jenny Gagalka (2024)