jackkemper

“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” (Genesis 1:29)

1:29 vividly depicts the prevalent Western perspective on nonhuman material, portraying it as a commodity to be exploited. It diminishes material to mere stock, objectifying it and relegating it to a "subdued" state of being. The term "stock" separates the polished appearance of the refined product from the history of human labor and physical origins that lie beneath its manufactured surface. This characterization not only reflects our contemporary American quest for "dominion" over the Earth but also shapes the way we process and display material in our everyday environments.

Here in America, we all play pretend.

Our contemporary consumption habits predominantly revolve around online sales and advertisements, accelerating the disconnect between our perception of materials and their actual origin and processing. Objects are often viewed as digital representations, irrespective of their physical existence or utility. With the widespread availability of sophisticated photo editing tools, genuine items get obscured behind the facade of screens, reducing photographs to pixelated representations that capture the essence of an object without any ties to its authentic properties (just like everything you see here). When our consumption is rooted in this conceptual model, where we prioritize imagined or hypothetical qualities over the tangible reality of an object, we distance ourselves even more from the origins of a material, plunging into a perception that values material primarily as a flat, aesthetic experience rather than as something tangible.

This act of flattening, with the categorization and division that accompany it, works to define the world through binaries; “nature” and “wilderness” as something separate from “civilization; simulations of understanding; false perceptions of reality, without any clear answers. Flatness is psychological; the map is psychological; the borders and divisions and categories are all psychological; nature is psychological and so is civilization. But how can we think without these value systems and definitions? All our ideas and judgements rely on systems of categorization. These systems inherently conceal an object’s (and their makers’) nuance and history - the multiplicity of origin, process, and experience - reducing a “thing” (object, material, etc.) to a single simplified idea of itself.

My textures push this process to its extreme, sampling and repeating a single part of something to capture its “essence” in a larger visual cacophony that captures the potential extremes of aesthetic categorization. Through this cacophany, I contend with the American obsession over the pretend, serving as a representation of our domestic fabrications that blur the lines between the 'true' and the 'false,' the 'real' and the 'imaginary' (Baudrillard). The objects encourage users and viewers to consciously engage in pretend in order to gain a deeper understanding of all the artificial constructs we often mistake for reality, passing them by every day. Hopefully everyone else will look twice, as I always do.

Works

Real Tree (2023)
Stick Table (2022)
Home Video System (2024)
Rustic Rocker (2024)
Live Edge (2023)
Stick Stool (2022)
President’s Chair (2024)
Knotted Box (2023)

Contact

jkemper@risd.edu

Instagram

@33t_fish