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future greAts
Jack Strange
by Ryan Gander
Jack Strange – it’s a name that sounds so good, you would think it had
been made up. I was introduced to Jack during studio visits at the
Slade School of Art a few years ago – strangely enough by Jonathan
Callan, an artist who used to teach me (that is often the way things
work – through someone passing on a baton of knowing and
appreciation). It was a group crit, and Jack was late. I was a bit
disgruntled, imagining a confident and bloodthirstily ambitious posh
kid, but in walked a slightly shy bloke whose eloquence came from
speaking in examples rather than speaking on air.
He hadn’t brought any work, and when I asked if I could see
something, he pulled a white iBook from his bag and a small lead ball
(about two centimetres in diameter) from his pocket. He opened the
laptop and placed the ball very precisely and with great intent on one
of its keys. A word-processing application was open, and the laptop
began producing strings of ‘G’s. When I asked him if the work was
durational, his reply was that the work was as durational as the space on
the hard disk, and at some point, of course, the application would crash
or the hard disk would be devoured. He also pointed out that, physically,
and in a very real sense, this laptop – which was then being hailed as a
revelation in product design – had been made defunct by this
primitive-looking lead sphere, because the glowing LCD screen lid
could no longer be closed. He’d transformed it into a spasticated
clamshell.
That was a few years ago. Jack’s not in college anymore – he’s
out on his own and seems to be benefiting from his distance from the
trappings and securities of art school. We were recently in New York,
working together (albeit in different capacities) on a group show at
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Something struck me about the directness of
Jack’s relationship to the work he makes, and indeed similarly to the
artworld in general. Up until the opening, he was working on producing
an armour of marbled plasticine colours entitled Fiend (2007), a
sculptural work that was worn and activated during the opening as a
performative work. Amidst the monumental space, superwhite walls,
copious gallery assistants and technical staff, ringing phones and cigar-
smoking collectors umm-ing and ahh-ing, it was, for me at least,
poignant to see Jack sitting on the floor quietly going about his work. It
got me thinking about something that is frequently forgotten in the
circus that is the artworld: that in a very basic way everything starts and
finishes with the artist, and that knowing that – as Jack does – gives the
artist the ability to remove himself from it… to remain unaffected and
uninfected. Without Jack, you’d have nothing but an empty room.
He came to my studio the other day and finished the Quality
Streets. The work he is doing now still has an Aladdin’s lamp quality and
still gives me stomach cramps as well as enough fear to want to rush to
the studio and try to do something brilliant.
from top: Nigel and Chris, 2007, paper, cardboard,
42 x 23 cm; Fiend, 2007, mixed-media performance;
Tom, 2007, 4 DVD stills, DVD, 22 min. All images:
courtesy the artist
91 Artreview
FUTURE~1.INDD 91 11/2/08 12:19:11
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