Jessica Tang
i check my whereabouts by the altitude
10.5.21 - 10.8.21
Leaving for the summer, left.
The first summer since the air became an enemy and the flesh of others even more terrifying. We all finally began to leave this island that we had adapted to and furnished with each other over the past year. The island was vacated slowly over the course of a few weeks as the thick heat reintroduced itself and we figured out how to reintroduce ourselves. Each of us flying off or filling our tanks up as gas prices went up daily as the land passed out the back to the right. We left our island that we had been trapped on by the masters of our masters. Finally gone. However, the tides would still come and go covering the tracks we had made, even without us
We should be excited. Excited to fly, excited to see something else other than the same shrubs, known faces, and cigarette butts over and over and over in different lights of the same never ending light. But we had made this island our own, our home, found love and lost what we thought was love, indulged in our fantasies and daydreams together making it all real and that reality is a motherfucker to leave left.
There is a hole left vacant in this separation. The skin that was known is replaced by fleeting flesh never to be seen again beyond the 10 minute overlaps when restocking the supplies and gas as we pass through separately on our way left.
Now back right. An overstimulation takes control in this humidity after 10 of the previous 20 rush into a departing silver bullet. This bullet accented inside with worn red leather and cream seats filled with familiar bodies. All of this makes me want the pathway to the island to disappear again. To leave us to be, leave me to be, leave me with those fleeting friendships while restocking and filling up between shaking bass. If I hear another goddamn voice, if I hear another four voices at once at the same time as the click of a turn, as the shake of the breaks under this never ending reflection that appears once the light has set because of the forever lights running in threes per car, doubled left and right inside, I’m going to fucking lose it. JESSICA SAMANTHA, I’M GOING TO LOSE IT.
I’m back on the train a week later with the same interior running lights and the same overcast sky and the train is shaking more than normal with less bodies on it. A now weekly forced ritual. Thursdays suck but this is only the third week
We can get so comfortable so quickly, whether that is within the over stimulation and accepting it. Or, in the regimented isolated routines of our mirrors that we were absorbed into this past year and change. I mean, we have to adapt. But then to drastically shift back to the other end of the spectrum is disorienting and aggressive. Obviously there are plenty of terrible ways to address this shift in the world we have occupied the past year visually. Illustrative visuals lacking any substance in their pathetic verticality which we have all seen on Instagram and on one of the few “gatekeepers” of photo editing and publishing sites. Keep me out of the fucking gates, keep em locked, get me back to the island where we can make it ourselves. I need the pathway to the island to present itself but I can’t control when it appears. We cannot control the moon and the tides but what we can do is observe the patterns. And I’m even feeling uneasy, even if only for a minute, locating Jessica Tang’s works in some sort of grounded way within this moment in time, within my frustration towards the state of art dissemination and frustration in general upon reentry. But it can’t be totally ignored, the specifics matter in order to allow us to get beyond the specifics, to create, even if I am only abstracting it through this rambling fragmentation. It is only because of time and the specifics of research, both emotional and environmental, all of which Jessica obsesses over, can these works be made. Although these works rely on ground as an entry point of conception - a tidal island revisited everyday for two weeks in the long tidal river state - a set of portraits only able to be made a year after each of our bodies met each other, no sooner, no later - time allows for the tears seen together and felt alone to culminate in the silver water, they blossom in their departure from specifics to something more felt than known.
Even though it felt like it was only us for the better part of the past year, we were not the only island. Others had been scattered around the water just out of our sight but still creating their own waves that would wash onto our beach. It seemed like everyone else had a similar plan this past summer and loaded up and left the other islands in their blue grey sprinters sprinting through the rolling fields that have absorbed the ones calling the typically flown over yellow fields home.
Two months later we are finally back. And three months later Jessica Tang’s exhibition,
i check my whereabouts by the altitude, is open in the labyrinth. But who the fuck are these new faces?
i check my whereabouts by the altitude
10.5.21 - 10.8.21
Leaving for the summer, left.
The first summer since the air became an enemy and the flesh of others even more terrifying. We all finally began to leave this island that we had adapted to and furnished with each other over the past year. The island was vacated slowly over the course of a few weeks as the thick heat reintroduced itself and we figured out how to reintroduce ourselves. Each of us flying off or filling our tanks up as gas prices went up daily as the land passed out the back to the right. We left our island that we had been trapped on by the masters of our masters. Finally gone. However, the tides would still come and go covering the tracks we had made, even without us
We should be excited. Excited to fly, excited to see something else other than the same shrubs, known faces, and cigarette butts over and over and over in different lights of the same never ending light. But we had made this island our own, our home, found love and lost what we thought was love, indulged in our fantasies and daydreams together making it all real and that reality is a motherfucker to leave left.
There is a hole left vacant in this separation. The skin that was known is replaced by fleeting flesh never to be seen again beyond the 10 minute overlaps when restocking the supplies and gas as we pass through separately on our way left.
Now back right. An overstimulation takes control in this humidity after 10 of the previous 20 rush into a departing silver bullet. This bullet accented inside with worn red leather and cream seats filled with familiar bodies. All of this makes me want the pathway to the island to disappear again. To leave us to be, leave me to be, leave me with those fleeting friendships while restocking and filling up between shaking bass. If I hear another goddamn voice, if I hear another four voices at once at the same time as the click of a turn, as the shake of the breaks under this never ending reflection that appears once the light has set because of the forever lights running in threes per car, doubled left and right inside, I’m going to fucking lose it. JESSICA SAMANTHA, I’M GOING TO LOSE IT.
I’m back on the train a week later with the same interior running lights and the same overcast sky and the train is shaking more than normal with less bodies on it. A now weekly forced ritual. Thursdays suck but this is only the third week
We can get so comfortable so quickly, whether that is within the over stimulation and accepting it. Or, in the regimented isolated routines of our mirrors that we were absorbed into this past year and change. I mean, we have to adapt. But then to drastically shift back to the other end of the spectrum is disorienting and aggressive. Obviously there are plenty of terrible ways to address this shift in the world we have occupied the past year visually. Illustrative visuals lacking any substance in their pathetic verticality which we have all seen on Instagram and on one of the few “gatekeepers” of photo editing and publishing sites. Keep me out of the fucking gates, keep em locked, get me back to the island where we can make it ourselves. I need the pathway to the island to present itself but I can’t control when it appears. We cannot control the moon and the tides but what we can do is observe the patterns. And I’m even feeling uneasy, even if only for a minute, locating Jessica Tang’s works in some sort of grounded way within this moment in time, within my frustration towards the state of art dissemination and frustration in general upon reentry. But it can’t be totally ignored, the specifics matter in order to allow us to get beyond the specifics, to create, even if I am only abstracting it through this rambling fragmentation. It is only because of time and the specifics of research, both emotional and environmental, all of which Jessica obsesses over, can these works be made. Although these works rely on ground as an entry point of conception - a tidal island revisited everyday for two weeks in the long tidal river state - a set of portraits only able to be made a year after each of our bodies met each other, no sooner, no later - time allows for the tears seen together and felt alone to culminate in the silver water, they blossom in their departure from specifics to something more felt than known.
Even though it felt like it was only us for the better part of the past year, we were not the only island. Others had been scattered around the water just out of our sight but still creating their own waves that would wash onto our beach. It seemed like everyone else had a similar plan this past summer and loaded up and left the other islands in their blue grey sprinters sprinting through the rolling fields that have absorbed the ones calling the typically flown over yellow fields home.
Two months later we are finally back. And three months later Jessica Tang’s exhibition,
i check my whereabouts by the altitude, is open in the labyrinth. But who the fuck are these new faces?
(left to right) Brian ; Amartya ; Rosy ; Rosa ; Eileen ; Nabil ; Annie, 2021, each 5” x 7”, archival inkjet prints
an island you can walk to (001), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (002), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (003), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (004), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (005), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (006), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (014), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (015), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (028), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (016), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (017), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (018), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (021), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (027), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (040), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (029), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (030), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (031), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (037), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (038), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (039), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (020), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (034), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
(left to right) Tarah ; Jessica ; Jackie ; Mickey ; Max ; Ronghui ; Dylan H. ; Dylan B. ; Chinaedu, 2021, each 5” x 7”, archival inkjet prints
an island you can walk to (007), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (008), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (009), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (010), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (011), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (012), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (013), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (019), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (041), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (026), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (022), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (023), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (024), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (025), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (032), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (033), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (042), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (035), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (036), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (043), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (044), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (045), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (046), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (047), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
an island you can walk to (048), 2021, 11” x 14”, silver gelatin print
(left to right) Alex ; Ian ; Emily ; Anabelle ; Brian, 2021, each 5” x 7”, archival inkjet prints