Jared Ginsburg
Ginsburg’s Residue III (standard) was not at first destined to be an art object. The sheet of glass was originally used to make monotypes – a rudimental printmaking technique where paper is placed on an inked surface, the artist draws on the reverse, and the paper is then lifted to reveal a mirror-image impression in ink. But like many things in Ginsburg’s studio, the discarded glass later proposed itself as artwork. It is an unexpected category shift – from uncleaned printing plate to art object, “scrap to discovery.” Still inked and marked with the last image printed (a nude woman with limbs akimbo), Residue III is exactly that: residue of process, of the studio, of the artist at work.
b.1985, Cape Town
Jared Ginsburg’s studio practice offers a repertoire of hesitations and inventions, a material study of perhaps and what if. With sculptures, video works, drawings and prints – or, as the artist says, with remains, traces, instruments, and devices – Ginsburg notates the time spent making, discarding, and making again. In Ginsburg’s studio, everything presents itself as potential material; off-cuts and waste, even old and forgotten artworks, are repurposed and reimagined as ‘found objects’. This is perhaps most evident in his kinetic sculptures, which carry traces of their previous lives as other works. They are inexact and fragile constructions; a series of propositions for further propositions, object studies of objects only conjectured.