If travel and distance are the most present concepts in Jason Dodge's work, it is above all the distance "between words and things" that gives meaning to his simple installations made up of everyday objects recomposed and assembled.
At first glance, the folded and tied blankets, stacked pillows, electrical wires, light bulbs illuminated or reassembled on the floor, recorders or metal rods with which he composes his installations do not seem inclined to say neither what is their function nor the reason for their presence. But this would imply omitting the literary part of the artist's work, which finds in reading and poetry in particular a source of privileged inspiration. This is why each of the works imagined by Jason Dodge is accompanied by a word, a sentence or a small text that opens a horizon of meaning by creating a distance between what is seen and what is stated. It is this interval, between the object and its legend, in which the poetry of the artist operates.
In the many versions of a work that presents itself as a blanket tied to the ground, he asks weavers of different countries to make a fabric with a thread that corresponds to the distance between the earth and the sky above the clouds, or about 12 kilometers. He also asks them to choose a thread of the color of the night.
With a simplicity that belies their conceptual nature, Jason Dodge's installations communicate powerful narratives where it is left to viewers to derive meaning from the work based on their own subjective associations to the objects.
"Generally, it is the people, the subjects that are lacking in what I do," Dodge explains. "I'm talking to you about them, but they're not there. It's as if I were using the feeling of loss as material."
Among the artists of his generation, Dodge most identifies with poets. It is indeed the manner in which poetry interferes with everyday life that interests him, for in his work process "invention comes into relation with things that exist or things that everybody does in his or her daily life".
Born in 1969 in Newton (Massachusetts, USA), he lives and works in Berlin.
