CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/6/2014

Ruffneck Constructivists

Featured spread, representing New York artist Jennie C. Jones, is reproduced from Ruffneck Constructivists, the exhibition catalogue for the "smart, gripping and confrontational" Kara Walker-curated group show currently on view at ICA Philadelphia. Walker writes, "Jones' minimalist work considers the music of in-between spaces, audible perhaps to those attuned to subterranean frequencies. Deeply introspective, Jones aligns herself with visionary music legend Sun Ra: 'I'm playing dark history. It's beyond black. I'm dealing with the dark things of the cosmos.' Absence is present in Jones's work. Using the subtext of music and the (primarily) African-American creative mindset that is represented in jazz improvisation, Jones conjures those in-between, fugitive spaces occupied by Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. For Jones, the architecture of sound—speakers, soundproof panels, stereo cables, and headsets—embodies the unheard space of thought itself. In "Silent Clusterfuck (bianca)" (2013), a tangle of latex-dipped iPod earbuds, she presents the earbud, a ubiquitous and democratizing music-delivery system, clumped and oozing—dripping with the very material of its manufacture—and evoking a complex and unhearable music. In her work "Shhhh #12" (2012), a professional noise-cancelling instrument cable emerges from and collapses into the exhibition wall. The cable bends and loops with the lyricism of a dancer, possessed of its own inner music."