Installation view, Jack O'Brien, The Reward, Camden Art Centre, 2024. Photo: Rob Harris
You probably recognize most of the items that comprise Jack O’Brien’s sculptures: discarded light bulbs, frayed seatbelts, cable ties, metal spoons. But then again, you might not. The London-based artist transforms everyday objects into larger-than-life structures, twisting, squeezing, and binding them together to create an uncanny distortion of reality. His new exhibit at Camden Art Center in London, The Reward, employs that same method of misuse. He displays a pair of spiral staircases encased in translucent stockinette and fitted with metal balls. Theoretically, the staircases could be used, but O’Brien has suspended them from the ceiling horizontally, thereby suspending their utility, too. “They’re pulled so far from their original state,” he told fellow artist Tarek Lakhrissi. “But the interesting thing for me is that they still hold on to what they actually are.” Lakhrissi, whose work is now on exhibition at Reiffers Art Center, also revels in disruption: the unfixed meanings that emerge when (seemingly) disparate objects and people interact. With both artists exhibiting their work this week at Art Basel Paris, at Capitan Petzel and Galerie Allen respectively, O’Brien called his longtime friend to talk about such “states of potential,” the RuPaul industrial complex, and why being an artist is a kink.
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