Jason Wright’s work utilizes everyday objects and print media to examine the body in relationship to culture. His work examines theories of the abject and uncanny, resulting in objects that are at once familiar, yet exceedingly strange. Humour plays a large role in Jason’s practice as he combines normally incompatible materials to create absurd yet provocative sculptures. This body of work, overtly masculine in focus, utilizes mops, pails, barbeques and print media to reference the male body. Materials such as lard, icing, artificial flowers and ornamental leaves are used as decorative, almost protective coverings. Covered in lard, the barbeque, a quintessential signifier of suburban masculinity, hovers like a spacecraft, or perhaps a round, pasty, naked body stripped of flesh? Sprouting steel “whiskers”, this vulnerable-looking form bares all for our judgment. In proximity to posters of an aggressive, macho warrior hero from the film “300,” we are compelled to form associations. In keeping with his interest in covering objects, Jason feminizes the heroic poster image by adorning the muscled male body with icing and flowers. Our understanding of both art and utility are challenged in these works. Rendering utilitarian objects useless compels us to see them in new ways. The seeming ‘handle’ of a steel headed mop begs to be touched, yet the unidentifiable brown coating is repulsive. This tension between seduction and repulsion is a constant in Jason’s work. Jason’s nature is one where the body is compromised, vulnerable and anything but natural.

-Leesa Streifler

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