Jake Shore
Jake Shore

The Walt Whitman bags…

There exists an impulse to create visual branding in artistic work in order to generate a recognizable character and branded entity in the art market. “Walt Whitman” acts as the brand concealing the artistic practice being shown in “Jake Shore.” With artworks being bought, sold, and auctioned, this idea of a brand comes into fruition. Pages of silkscreened poetry stuffed in bags, building form, are completely concealed behind opaque mesh and the title of “Walt Whitman.”

The display of these artworks mimics that commodity through its generic-brand third-party fabrication, playing off its cheapness. Then, the distance between domestic, low-cost artist-run establishments and luxury stores becomes briefly collapsed in deadpan humor. And the viewer is left to find the intersection points between these ideas and their personal entrance into the work.

It’s all poetry: Walt Whitman the poet, Jake Shore the artist. Existing abstracted poetic phrases drawn compositionally and printed on newsprint, the interaction between art objects in spatial relation to each other, and the contextual space of the apartment all reverberate and bounce in, around, and through each other. Here, “poetry/poem” acts as a nondescript punctuation to classify certain things. Similar to how paintings become classified based on what they represent (i.e: grass painting, love painting, relationship painting), “poem” can act as a resting point for an idea to stop at.

The nondescript can be seen being concretely in language as well, specifically the Italian word, “Allora.” Translated to mean “well, so, or then,” this word is used as a filler in conversation, to occupy the beginning, middle, and ends of dialogue. Brought together, there is a strong parallel between Jake’s application and understanding of “poem” / the use of Walt Whitman’s name, and the specific use of “allora” in Italian language.

Jake Shore (b. 1995), a leo, graduated with a BFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017. He now lives and works in New York City.

October 15-November 17, 2023