"IN MOMENTS OF CONTEMPORARY IGNORANCE I AM PIERCED BY DREAD" - LEXICONS OF LOSS WITH JAK
- Grace Miskovsky
- Feb 7, 2024
- 8 min read
Who is Jak? The softspoken, elusive, and profoundly articulate painter from Maine is redefining symbols and icons of popular American culture. Black cats, emblems of bad luck, become protective silhouettes and monoliths of remembrance. The American flag motif is exposed, once seen as a shrine to freedom, as an ideogram of terrorism which weighs heavy on our Western consciousness. While exploring dread, guilt, loss, and comfort, Jak strives to emphasize the essence of things, to eliminate the unnecessary. Donned in leather motorcycle boots, shrouded in thick layers of black coats and a pair of knit gloves, the mysterious multi-hyphenate shared with me his thoughts on his debut European exhibition titled "War," shown at Berlin gallery Better Go South. Made in collaboration with New York City-based streetwear brand Hyacyn, run by Tobias Ulmer, Jak pays homage to his practice as a documentarian of fashion and pop culture while exploring personal and national remembrance.
GRACE MISKOVSKY: Can you talk about your background in painting? Any formal or self taught training? What was your introduction to the art world?
JAK: I had always been interested in it, and good at it. I liked art class when I was in school. When I was in high school I had a painting teacher who, in my senior year, opened up a room - this storage room, and he let me use it as a studio. I got to keep a speaker in there and listen to Wu Tang. The idea then was, I was going to make a portfolio for art school, and I did - I applied, and I got accepted to RISD. But it’s so expensive, so I was like, “I’m going to take a gap year and figure it out.” Basically, I haven’t stopped taking gap years, and it’s working so far. We’re in Berlin right now.
GM: What are your aesthetic interests? What are you interested in showing and representing?
JAK: I want to show my taste, because I think I have good taste. I like a painting in a room that works well with a table in the room, that works well with salt and pepper shakers in the next room, and whatever music you’re listening to and what food you’re eating. I try to curate my life in that way, not in an overly manipulative way, but in a natural way. It just happens to work with each other, because I’m not taught, I’m not trained by somebody. I’m doing it on my own, so the way I approach a painting and the way I approach a table is the same way - I’m just figuring it out as I go. I want to have an environment or a world that you’re able to step into and everything has its purpose and place.
GM: I’m interested in your style - you have a very distinctive way of representing your subjects. It’s abstracted, rough around the edges, textured, the faces of your human subjects are often distorted or silhouetted. You’re able to move seamlessly through painting the absolute silhouette of a cat figure or a person, to sometimes really detailing the specificities of faces, when you choose to focus in on them. Can you talk about your interest in stylistic intricacies? How has your painting style evolved over the years?
JAK: How I think about it is, “What is the point of this? Is this element really necessary to flesh out?” I like these look pieces - they don’t have to be a detailed face, but you recognize it’s a face because of the context of the body. You recognize that these are shoes, and these must be legs. It also is a scale thing. On bigger pieces, I’m able to simplify it and have the information necessary and only the information necessary there. When I was first starting out, I was doing reworks of hip hop album covers. All that was good practice on how to simplify a thing that everybody knows. With a lot of those, it was about speed and not really anything else. Definitely a little bit of clout chasing going on. I have evolved those elements of simplifying a well known thing and learning what is important to share, what to actually focus on, and also how to get a point across with the least amount of words possible. Which is why there’s no ‘C’ in ‘Jack.’ You don’t need the extra sound. It’s phonetics.
GM: Through following your work the last few years, it seems you’ve developed an interest in iconography and the representation of ideas through specific lexicons - the cats, the American flags, and the imagination of celebrity and stylistic imagery. Can you talk about the development of these ideas over the last few years?
JAK: It’s redefining, or recommissioning, what a symbol is. The black cats are a symbol of bad luck, and the American flag is a symbol of all the bad things that America has done. When I started working on the last show in Canada at Capsule, I wanted to have it be a symbol of rebuilding.
I titled the last show “Post-2020,” which was a reference to a Virgil Abloh piece. It was this big yellow billboard that Virgil had up on his DJ booth and it said “Post 9/11.” It was in reference to how art had changed post 9/11. I was thinking about after 2020, how the world had changed on a large scale and also on a personal scale. I lost my mom, I lost a lot of relatives, not from COVID, but from life. It was not an easy time post-2020. Back to the flag, there’s an image, after 9/11, of firefighters hoisting this tattered American flag out of the rubble. That flag became this symbol for Americans to come together and unite as a people again. It became a good thing. After 2020, which was another massive tragedy and loss of life and morals and major shifts, we never had a moment of a “flag in the rubble.” It became a worse symbol. I wanted to use, in the small way that it was, in this small show, to ask for unity again. To call for loving one another even if it’s very hard to love your neighbor. Now, in this show, it’s only gotten worse. [The flag is a] symbol now of this looming reminder of loss, and we have to rebuild from this loss, but we just keep losing. It was initially supposed to be a positive call, but now it feels more looming and somber.
The black cats, which are normally a symbol of bad luck, are called “Puck.” It’s a series of “Puck’s.” I had a little kitten named Puck, and he got hit by a car, and it was sad. The next year, we got another little black cat, and her name was Puck 2, and she also got hit by a car. Late 2021, I painted the first “Puck.” When I made it, I was thinking about black cats and silhouettes, and watching a lot of Balenciaga and Rick Owens. It was just a cool painting for the sake of being cool. Then, I thought after that, “I’ll do a ‘Puck 2.’” Early 2022 was when I lost my mom and a lot of other people. I kept doing the black cats and I didn’t really know why, but by the end of 2022 I had a studio full of them. I was curious, and I looked up, “Why does a black cat represent bad luck?” I found out that another interpretation of the black cat as a symbol is a loved one watching over you. That’s what they represent for me - a loved one, or a chance to remember somebody.
That is the recommissioned symbol - this bad luck symbol is now a monolith of remembrance, a chance to have a good memory. They’re also pretty somber and looming, because it gets easier, but it’s never easy. In this show, the American flag and “Puck” are together. It’s a reminder of loss and a little bit of comfort, but also this call to rebuild from that, but now it’s scary - this is going to keep happening. It’s not enough to say it’s weird times we’re living in. There’s war in 2024 - how is this possible? We are able to witness war immediately when it happens, and how does that not stop everything?
GM: Let’s talk about your exhibition. Can you give me the elevator pitch for the show - what story are you telling through this selection of paintings?
JAK: It’s called “War.” I didn’t know what the reception was going to be - having a show with American flags in Germany called “War.” It’s what I thought the best way to illustrate the point was. It’s the looming feeling of guilt and loss in normal everyday life for most of the Western world. The things that I see on Instagram or Twitter of what people are complaining about on a day to day, is like, come on. I catch myself doing it too, and I have to kick myself a little bit. The worst day of my life was horrible and hard and I would never wish it on anyone, but there are people that have hurt way more and will continue to. It’s a little bit guilty, but it’s like, “Should I feel guilty?” That’s what I was thinking about with these works. What am I supposed to feel right now? And then, because this is business, the Hyacyn illustrations for the space to fill out. They’re not tied to the exhibition necessarily, but it’s a good callback to my work as a documenter of pop culture.
GM: In my experience showing art in Berlin, it’s a great place for young artists to connect. Berlin doesn’t have the money that Paris or New York has, and this is reflected in the market here. It takes some of the pressure off - like, we’re just showing to show and to connect and talk about art and meet people, which is such a beautiful thing. How has your experience showing in Berlin been? What’s your take on the scene here, even after a short exhibition run?
JAK: The opening was cool - a lot of people who had worked with Toby at his old marketing firm, and they’re all into artwork.
GM: And collecting?
JAK: Yeah, but also the younger crowd. I don’t know how they heard about it. Everybody dresses well, it’s a very stylish city. Having this show here specifically and being titled “War” and being about what it is, is like - everywhere you go here, there’s the history of the Berlin Wall, and the Nazis, and there’s this big looming feeling, like, something really bad happened here. We went to the Boros Bunker the other day, and that building is a really good representation of what I’ve seen of Berlin. It was built by the Nazis as a shelter of war, and then it turned into a rave club, and now it’s the highest high art.
GM: Fashion is a clear influence for you in your work. Can you talk about the intersection of fashion and art, painting specifically? How was the decision made to incorporate a clothing brand into the exhibition?
JAK: I like clothes. I like documenting moments and style. Fashion Week is a fun watch. It’s a battery for me, of seeing what new ideas are able to be done. All the pieces of clothes that I’m drawing are a way to pay homage, a way to remember what happened this year. A half dream of mine is to end up like a Karl Lagerfield sketcher, or to do something with a magazine and illustrate a bunch of looks. Having those [clothing] pieces here just made sense.
GM: Anything else you want to add or you want people to know about this show?
JAK: I don’t want to tell anyone how to approach it, because at the end of the day, art is subjective. But that’s why I made it, and I hope people will resonate with it, because I resonate with it. That’s all I can really ask.
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