Love Triangle
Jack O’Brien
Pasaje Catedral 5to Piso
Centro Historico, Ciudad de Mexico
02.08.24 – 02.25.24
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Aro is pleased to present Love Triangle, a solo exhibition by London-based sculptor Jack O’Brien. The exhibition occupies three units of the Pasaje Catedral, a 1940s arcade specializing in religious paraphernalia in the center of Mexico City.
In Eros the Bittersweet, the poet Anne Carson writes of triangulations of desire in ancient Greek poetry. She identifies a triangle between the lover, the beloved, and the desirous space in between. Carson writes “Desire is not simple... It melts limbs. Boundaries of body, categories of thought are confounded.” It is precisely this melting that animates the works of O’Brien.
For the exhibition, O’Brien has created an architectural intervention that spans the three rooms. Three white pipes pierce through the walls, connecting the rooms and forming a viewing device. The circular extrusions function as punctuation and a pliable sinew framing three distinct images. The cherry, a motif in O’Brien’s work, is a symbol of eroticism and sensuality and appears in each room printed on a thick upholstery foam.
In the first room, the white pipes protrude from the wall and are rimmed with black paint. On the floor a large foam print folds in on itself. The malleability of the foam is mirrored in the image it depicts – a blur, a body, erotic and melting, a small cherry – simultaneously familiar and unidentifiable. In the second room, the pipes extend seamlessly from wall to wall. They frame a smaller work, an image of an ancient cherry pit sourced from a seed bank. The third room is darker and the pipes become three orifices of filtered light. A diptych hangs in opposition – a bonnet made of cherries is elongated and transparent acrylic cylinders press into the thick foam.
The triangulations of desire Carson describes are categorized by a persistent reaching and a desire to understand that which eludes us. We see this in the visual codes O’Brien establishes throughout the exhibition. The three rooms, three pipes, three cherries, the play between ornament, abstraction, and desire, produce a spreading sensation whose pleasure rests in the very act of reaching.
Jack O’Brien (b. 1993) lives and works in London. He was the recipient of the 2023 Camden Art Centre Artist Prize at Frieze London. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include: The Answer, Sans Titre Invites, Paris, FR (2023); To More Time, Lockup International, London, UK (2022); The Influence of Emotions On Associated Reactions, with Henryk Morel (1937-68), Polamagnetczne Gallery, Warsaw, PL (2022) and Waiting For The Sun To Kill Me, Ginny on Frederick, London, UK (2021). Recent group exhibitions include: Support Structures, Gathering, London, UK (2023); Memory of Rib, N/A Gallery, Seoul, KR (2022); Chômage Technique, Lovaas Projects, Munich, DE (2022); Something is Burning, Kunsthalle Bratislava, SK (2022); An Insular Rococo, Hollybush Gardens, London, UK (2022) and Strange Messengers, Peres Projects, Berlin, DE (2018).
Exterior
Installation view
Installation view
UV print on upholstery foam, chrome plated steel, polystyrene, cellophane
Installation view
Installation view
UV print on upholstery foam, spray paint, acrylic plastic, electrical cable
Installation view
Installation view
Installation view
UV print on upholstery foam, spray paint, acryli/c plastic, electrical cable
UV print on upholstery foam, spray paint, acryli/c plastic, electrical cable
Installation view
Room 3
Installation view
Installation view