Taipei Biennial 2012

The works of Jason Dodge function as material witnesses for actions that belong to the realm of the imaginary and are presented in space in the form of an absence. The sparse objects operate as poetry and form a screen that is necessarily filled with a narrative. The titles give away what happened to the works before they were placed in the exhibition which gives them the appearance of “objets trouvés”, but with the understanding that the object’s qualities were meant to be. This way of looking crosses the geographic and temporal, to include other places and times, and sometimes other senses other than sight alone.

The Ornithologists Are Sleeping consists of pillows that have been slept on once, each by a different ornithologist. They are installed next to The Children Are Sleeping, a work made using the same logic. Whereas the ornithologists are defined by their eccentric passion, the children are arranged for their status of being non-adults, both having dreams ascribed to this identity. Both works are arranged to create the sense that the bodies of the ornithologists and children are missing, as the pillows are put in the original sleeping position. These works engage in a well-defined intimacy, as they are juxtaposed with the piece Anyone. While the pillows of the former work were shipped to Taipei by the artist, who knows well who slept on them, Anyone consists of a pile of bed sheets from a hotel in Taipei which have been slept on numerous times and continue to be slept on and changed weekly. 

In Alto Flute Filled With Deadly Nightshade, this negotiation of a borderline is situated in the status of the object itself. The flute is forcefully silenced and creates a present vacuum, as its status shifts from being an object that is used to being an object that gets a life of its own and becomes a beautiful threat to anyone interested in playing it.

Jason Dodge, born 1969 in USA, lives and works in Berlin