Aaron Jones: Big MOdels
108|Contemporary
through September 19
What if we could pause a process midstream, between concept and final product, and get curious about what that moment looks like? It’s a peculiar and surprising state, a often-rushed-through waystation, and it’s one that Big MOdels—Aaron Jones’ current show at 108|Contemporary, up through September 19—goes all in for.
Jones is a working architect who’s regularly called on to build small-scale models for large-scale projects. Here, he explores a kind of model that slips out of the strict architect/client project development timeline and takes on a life of its own. Instead of moving toward installation on a playground, for instance, or living forever in miniature 3D plans, Jones’ triple tube slides get sliced off at the top so they’re open to the sky, then strapped together like forms that might want to squirm away or just keep rolling around each other forever if given the chance. He expands the model to a scale just big enough to get your arms around, to feel its physicality alongside or even as distinct from its function.
Far from feeling unfinished, these models instead read as open. In fact they’re full of spaces: a plywood panel that folds and hinges off the wall like a Jacob’s Ladder toy to make triangular pockets behind, or the bare wood studs that become the exposed framework of, maybe, a chapel like the one in Venice that’s captured in a huge printed photograph tacked to on one side of its interior. On the gallery’s far wall, four roof tiles are sat on end, their undersides (with a cyan base layer peeking through) facing out and peaks facing back, like alcoves or resonating chambers. It’s hard to resist the urge to put your face right into all these spaces, but you really don’t have to resist it: these pieces invite you to get close and coexist.
I’ve moved through this exhibit a few times, getting ready for an improvised performance my movement collective did there last weekend. We poked out of holes and leaned out between boards that leaned in; we played with the angles and curves and grooves in the surfaces; we looked through structures and tucked ourselves under tables, our bodies' architecture in conversation with these forms and the slightly-off-from-"normal" way they inhabited the room.