David Jang fabricates expansive structures as unlikely in their obsessiveness as in their function. Constructed out of materials or even objects as common and abject as Styrofoam cups, paper towel rolls, and empty kimchee containers, Jang's elaborate concoctions evince a sense of pattern and texture that reveals the mad sensuality coursing through the consumerist landscape. This sensuality, and no less this madness, heighten when Jang sets his concoctions and collections in motion, the repeated units scraping and thumping against one another and against wall and floor and whatever other surface they contact. The resulting cacophony of boogying recyclables is at once hilarious, frightening, charming, and strangely reassuring, analog automatons whose inner workings we can comprehend. At rest, or un-automated, Jang's accretions, two-dimensional and three, seem positively organic, sometimes like immense protozoa, sometimes like hothouse forests, sometimes like the hides of animals born of metal. (Sandra Lee, 251 Post St., San Francisco; closed.
www.sandraleegallery.com) - Peter Frank
DAVID JANG, Novelty, 2010, Chip bags, chicken wire, binder clips, 52 x 210 x 110 inches
First Posted: 10/07/11 04:21 AM ET Updated: 12/06/11 05:12 AM ET