Projects
The Gap Between Two Jasons
2020–2021 · Montreal, Canada
Lacune: a gap, an absence, a missing piece.
Jason Wasserman is one of my closest friends. Our relationship has grown through more than a decade of artistic collaboration, especially through EN MASSE.
By the time we began LACUNE, we knew a great deal about working together. This project gave us a way to unsettle that familiarity—to stay with an image longer, take greater liberties and become less protective of what either of us had made.
Two Jasons, with different visual languages and plenty to talk about.
Throughout the heart of the pandemic, we returned to the studio twice a week.
It became a place where we could disagree, remain uncertain and keep working together. At a time when relationships were strained by isolation and distrust, that regular company mattered enormously.
I was also living with significant illness and chronic pain. The studio was one of the few places where sustained creative focus still felt possible.
The conversations became part of the work—the work part of the conversations.
Black & White
Black and white was an obvious place to begin, extending the collaborative language we had developed through EN MASSE.
The collage process itself was unfamiliar. We spent weeks learning how to work with the materials: which papers to use, how to glue them, what happened when layers met, which effects we wanted to pursue and which we would rather avoid.
Rice, vellum and tracing papers offered different weights, textures and degrees of transparency. We drew with waterproof India ink, bringing patterns, figures and lettering into the mix, with plenty of comic-book nostalgia.
Then we tore them apart.
A drawing could be complete and satisfying in its own right. We dismantled it anyway, passing fragments between us and assembling them into something neither could have planned alone.
Our first four pieces were massive. There was good work in them, but they were big and heavy.
We began working on smaller Gatorboard panels I already had in the studio. Their surfaces had been carefully primed and covered with vellum, giving us a well-prepared foundation for the next experiments.
Working back and forth, we drew, tore, pasted and reconsidered. Double-J tag-team. Images disappeared beneath layers or met fragments that changed how they read. Something set aside could return weeks later in an entirely different context.
Gradually, we became more comfortable with the process and more willing to take chances within it.
Into Colour
Once we had found our footing in black and white, we began working with colour.
For all our years of collaboration, using colour together took us into territory neither of us had explored quite this way. We were learning how our decisions could coexist, interfere with one another and open possibilities we wouldn’t have found separately.
Inks, paint, spray paint and collage gave us more ways to obscure, separate and reconnect the images. The familiarity we had developed with the materials allowed us to push further into what was unfamiliar between us.
There is Dada in the project’s DNA: images pulled from their usual settings, unexpected associations, humour rubbing against unease.
We weren’t trying to make every piece settle into a single reading. The pleasure was often in what happened between images—in a collision, an awkward fit or a connection discovered after the fact.
That freedom depended on friendship. We had to be willing to let something we valued become material for the other person’s next move.
The works were intended for an exhibition in France. Conditions surrounding COVID ultimately made participation impossible.
Most have never been publicly exhibited. For years, they have remained stacked in storage, their encounter with an audience still to come.
But those studio days remain important to me. We made room for friendship, disagreement and experimentation at a time when so much of life had contracted. We could take things apart, knowing there was someone beside us willing to help make something of the pieces.
Both Jasons on the same page, even if slightly torn.
Interested in the work?
Works from LACUNE are available for purchase, and we welcome opportunities to exhibit the collection. Get in touch to discuss a particular piece or a possible show.
© Jason Botkin