‘Jon Kessler is well known for his homemade mechanisms that activate found representations, usually drawn from mass culture, often with delirious lighting and compulsive movement. Yet over the last five years-that is, since 9/11-a shift has occurred in his work. He has introduced video, mostly in the low-tech form of small surveillance cameras, some of which relay the bizarre actions of automatons on nearby monitors. He has expanded the scale of his mechanical tableaux, sometimes to the point where they almost engulf the viewer in a noisy tangle of gadgets, screens, cables, and wires. And he has responded, directly and indirectly, to the image-world of the Bush era, reworking news bites, military reports, tourist postcards, seductive ads, and franchised toys into delirious little dramas that deconstruct some of the political fixations and cultural fascinations of contemporary America. Imagine The Light-Space Modulator of Moholy-Nagy redone with gizmos found on Canal Street by an artist who (like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange) was forced to watch the awful events of the last five years on television.
‘The use of video, Kessler has remarked, “freed me to think of the machine as events and the image created as the spectacle.” This formulation points to the circularity of his image-mechanisms, but there are also breaks within them. For even as his machines stage events for his cameras, the setups are rough, and the viewer not only watches the low-tech images but also sees their madcap production, which is sometimes so close to destruction that the two cannot be easily separated. The automatic aspect of the image-mechanisms is thus far from perfect or stable: Like little Frankenstein’s monsters, they almost threaten to turn, if not on their maker, then on their viewer. And this viewer is also far from whole or secure: One not only sees but also is sometimes seen, and no two viewers witness precisely the same thing. Machine and image try “to complete each other, which is impossible,” Kessler comments, and so “a puncture” is produced between the real and its representation-a puncture that allows us to see through these setups and, in principle, to see through others in the world. Through his own little dysfunctional spectacles, then, Kessler suggests that the great spectacle of American power is also in trouble, that its wizards cannot maintain its theater of illusions forever, that wondrous new technologies are always haunted by awful new disasters, and so on. And in this way, he points to another crucial contradiction of the American Empire today: Even as its power goes unchecked by its allies, let alone by its enemies, its image, especially in the Middle East, continues to take a beating.
‘Kessler recalls various predecessors: Robert Rauschenberg and his rambunctious combinations of media appropriations, Claes Oldenburg and his regressive theater of homemade objects, Jean Tinguely and his auto-destructive contraptions, and so on. Closer to the present, one might also think of Mike Kelley and his inspired reenactments of the weird things that asocial men concoct in their basements and backyards. Other associations come to mind as well-media theorists like Paul Virilio, filmmakers like David Cronenberg, and fiction writers like Thomas Pynchon and Philip K. Dick. Similarly, Kessler plays with the tension between connection and disconnection in the world, and he, too, constructs “influencing machines” to do so (that could be another rubric for his installations). At the same time, he refuses to be at their mercy; indeed, his machines are models of how to jam, however momentarily, the image-flow of the great machines of power.’ — Hal Foster
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Re:
‘Jon Kessler and His Mechanical Art’
Jon Kessler: The Future Was Perfect
Jon Kessler: Kessler’s Circus
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Further
Jon Kessler Official Website
Jon Kessler @ Salon 94
Jon Kessler @ ARNDT
Re: Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler’s ‘Seven’
‘Jon Kessler Celebrates the Blue People’
Jon Kessler interviewed @ Artwrit
Saul Ostrow on Jon Kessler @ BOMB
Jon Kessler on Tom Sachs @ BOMB
David Joselit on Jon Kessler @ Artforum
Books by Jon Kessler
Peter Carey ‘THE ENTIRE SYSTEM OF DEGRADATION, TURNOVERS AND TRAVESTIES’
Audio: ‘THE CHEMISTRY OF TEARS INSPIRES ARTIST JON KESSLER’
Video: Jon Kessler making work in the studio
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Interview
by Gen. Arthur Prinzhorn and Ethan Prinzhorn
In the ’80s, you became known for doing specifically sculptural pieces that embraced elements of kitsch and found objects—how do you see this current show as an extension of the ideas put forth back then?
JK: I was always interested in getting people to look behind the curtain. Getting them to become active viewers, to investigate the mechanism, to suspend their disbelief, and, finally, to have an experience with the objects that I was presenting, even if many of those objects originated as kitsch. The very early work played with pictorial space by creating a duality between the mechanism and the screens that was hopefully more than the sum of its parts. In many ways, this recent video work is a return to this duality. It’s funny that you say I became known in the ’80s. The changes in the work were facilitated by the fact that I felt completely free to reinvent myself. I had lost or left all of my galleries, and there was little interest in the work. When Artforum published the double issue on the ’80s and there was no mention of me at all, I really knew that no one was watching me.
I would also say that there is a related theme in both your early works and your current show, which concerns the fetish. The early work, it seems, plays with this notion of the fetish in relation to objects—the complex power that we lend kitsch, for instance. Similarly, in this current show, you refer to the power that we imbue in the event—the fetish of 9/11. Does this resonate? Are you ever afraid of falling into that trap of fetishizing 9/11 as so many have, politicians as well as artists?
JK: The works from the ’80s did address commodity fetish, although this was never foregrounded in my work the way it was in my contemporaries such as Jeff [Koons] or Haim [Steinbach]. In the Asian-inspired works, it was more of an attempt to fetishize the culture—turning exoticism and otherness into a commodity. As for fetishizing and exploiting the events of 9/11, there is no overestimating the harmful effect that Al Qaeda’s ability to stage a truly murderous image-event had on the control of image production in our culture. September 11 is a constant reminder of America’s vulnerability and proof that we no longer have a monopoly on big violence.
Do you think of your work as interactive art?
JK: My work has included the viewer for many years, so in that sense it’s interactive. Isolated Masses from 1985 had a heater that slowly warmed the viewer if they got close to the work. Path of a Carp from 1987 had an electric eye and voice chip that welcomed the viewer in Japanese. In my new work, everything changed when I removed the background in Party Crasher and the hairy dude occupied the same space as the viewer. This premise of including the viewer continued in Heaven’s Gate, Gisele and the Cinopticon, and exploded in the “The Palace at 4 A.M.” The viewer certainly interacts with my show whether they want to or not by constantly entering the work—completing and disrupting the camera’s sight lines.
[Your work] comments brilliantly on the image production of our time.
JK: One of [my work’s] intentions is to oversaturate the viewer’s visual stimuli and expose the world as a prop for the constant fabrication of images to feed our collective desires. Reality shows and photo-op wars are an unambiguous manifestation of this phenomenon and an example of the democratization of voyeurism. The exhibition is emblematic of our historical moment, where time and imagery are conflated, so that our relationship to experience becomes increasingly confused and distorted. This complexity is internalized by the viewer, who simultaneously becomes spectator, performer, voyeur, and exhibitionist. If we are to appreciate our infatuation with and proximity to surveillance, then, for me, the question becomes not How can we destroy the camera? but How can we undermine the surveilled image and empower ourselves?
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Show
Lost Boy 2 (2012)
Lost Boy #1 (2012)
The 5th Column (2011)
Smoker (2012)
Fallen Hero (2012)
Magnum Opus (2012)
Live in Your Head (2012)
The Future Was Perfect (2012)
I’m Nothing Without You (2013)
The Swans (2014)
Blue Boy (2015)
The Iron Curtain (2016)
Search For Tomorrow (2016)
The Invention of Solitude (2016)
Killing Time (with Robert Longo) (2016)
Birdrunner #2 (2016)
Word Box (2016)
Music Box (2016)
Steam in Stereo (2016)
The Hostage (2007)
Modern Vision (2005)
The Art of Tea (1985)
Isolated Masses (for Peace) (1985)
Heaven ’84 (1984)
Visions of China (1984)
Still Life with Pork Chop (1994)
The Big Wave (1994)
Marcello 9000 (1994)
The Secret Storm (1984)
The Last Birdrunner (1994)
Cookie Machine (1994)
Autumn Box (1994)
The Blue Period (2007)
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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Cool, I’d hoped so. Maybe with love’s help we can set up a highly lucrative ‘Please help Dominik’s urgent footwear crisis’ gofundme? I have to say, yesterday’s task for love would be the pot of gold at the end of the ultimate rainbow, or I guess that pot of gold’s souvenir. Love making the long lost trend of bobbing for apples come back in style with a vengeance, G. ** BA, I didn’t know the work of Dexter Dalwood before, and it looks terrific. Thank you! ** James, Hi. Ugh, sorry about that. I’m good with first name usage, for sure. Thank you so kindly for your really good words. I’m gay and precocious too, or well, perhaps I’m too old now to be precocious, but I was, and what were the odds? ‘Pufrock’ is obviously a good fave. Hm, I guess I might say off the top of my head anyway that my favorite poems are Rimbaud’s ‘A Season in Hell’ and James Schuyler’s ‘This Dark Apartment’. Oh, yeah, the p.s block must seem pretty strange, at least at first. But puzzles are nice, at least solvable ones. What do I know, but I suspect your writing doesn’t suck, etc., and, if it helps, my writing completely sucked for years and years until I laboriously figured out how to make it not suck. I’m not kidding. So, don’t sweat it, just believe in it and stay dedicated to it. That worked for me. 10 minutes a day of actual hands-on writing is good. And the thinking part is just as important, I think. Great that you want to hang and discuss and etc. Coldness and crispness seems to my day ahead’s fate. Could be so much worse, no? ** jay, Hi. I don’ have a Cloudflare dashboard. It’s all imbedded in my hosting site, and they’re not being very helpful, to say the least. I’ll look for ‘Alien: Isolation’, or I guess some non-VR evidence of it. I like challenging games, I just don’t really like fighting things/characters in games unless they’re wussy or can be conquered cerebrally. I haven’t seen that porn you mentioned. Huh, interesting. I’ll go find something and learn. And give another shot to VR in general. It’s been, gosh, a year or something since I tried it, and it’s surely post-seasickness inducing status by now. Bon day! ** Lucas, Oh, okay. I mean on the big iron intake needing a prescription thing. I sort of knew you meant next weekend, not the one that starts tomorrow. I’m going some place this evening that might stock ‘Birth of the Clinic’ in English, so I’ll scribble a reminder on a slip of paper and put it in my pocket, because that’s what I do rather than noting it on my phone because I don’t trust my phone (or something). ‘The Book of Disquiet’ is really wonderful, yeah. And Reverdy! I used to be really super into his poetry when I was writing poetry. His poetry is so fleet of foot or something. I’m okay. I’m not sure if things are looking good with the film. We’re at a very tricky moment, and the enemy of the film is acting like a total enemy, so we’re trying to win, and I know we will, but I’m not sure how yet. Can’t really talk about it right now, and it would be tedious to read about even if I could. Thanks, my pal. ** Steve, Very happy about the calmness, and I hope it has legs. Thanks for the Carax report. That’s sort of what I imagined based on the reports of those I know who’ve caught it. I’m seeing Lucretia Martel talk at a screening of ‘Zama’ tonight. Hm, I think I found most of the vids through google searching under the video option using a variation on the title of the post as my search terms, but it’s been a while. ** Uday, Sad indeed. I wrote most of a whole novel and lost it once, back when people wrote novels longhand on pieces of paper. You want to know sad? I did hear about the Chalamet lookalike contest, but I didn’t hear much more than that he crashed it. If you can combine being mercurial with being disciplined, you’ll do really well, on an artistic level at least. Agreed about 3D reenacting of utterly banal things. That’s probably why I think I liked the malfunctioning toaster one the best. Uh, the rest of the month? Visiting friends, some upcoming events, Paris being decorated for Xmas, … gosh, it might be a pretty unexciting month, but oh well. Do you have ways in mind to make your month pop? ** Tyler Ookami, Hey. Strange that Rate Your Music can be so helpful, given that off-puttingly hierarchical yet dull moniker, but, yeah, it is. I don’t know a few of those artists you mentioned, but I’ll clue myself in, thanks. I’ll check out that J-pop video when I’m done here, but, it sounds like what the doctor, or at least the doctor’s assistant, prescribed. Thanks again! ** Stella maris, Hi, Stella! No immediate music gig plans, but I haven’t checked the listings in a couple of weeks, so I’m probably missing out on things. Enjoy Mount Eerie. Where’s he playing in LA? I was going to say don’t put too much stock in your prof’s opinion, but you already know that. Don’t even get me started on the conservatism and market-driven goals of most film studies programs. The marginalisation of experimental film makes me blow a gasket. Even here in France where they should know much, much better. So you’re writing! Yay! And, wow, I’ll go look at the Expat site and maybe let me know when your Hobart piece goes up. That’s great, those are really good venues. I’m obviously really interested to discover your work. And, yeah, you can write seriously and make films seriously at the same time, if that ends up making sense. Or that’s what I do, at least. Plus, given the time/hassle it takes to make films, it’s good to have good old one-on-one writing to fill all the film-related void time. Very happy birthday! Did you do anything out of the ordinary? I dislike my birthdays too. I usually just go to the one place in Paris that serves decent nachos with friends and celebrate by gorging. Happiest birthday ever by hook or crook. ** Okay. Last week I filled my galerie with Tobias Armstrong’s low-tech animatronic art, and today I’m following that up with a show of Jon Kessler’s similarly odd, awkward but more polished animatronic art, and I hope you click on the examples and enjoy yourselves. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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