Jason Gabriel Smith – WORKBENCH: TOTEM

A typical workbench is a solid wooden table at which manual work is done. Often tools are mounted on the rectangular surface in order to fix work pieces. Provisions for mounting, storing and accessing tools complete this universal working equipment. Its design varies corresponding to the work that has to be done.

Jason Gabriel's WORKBENCH: is both a functional object and a physical representation of contemplation. Past WORKBENCH: projects such as a chain passing through a small hole at the top's centre or a wooden box filled with sand which trickles through another small central whole, are tasks of meditation and not real physical work. They represent the mundane of the everyday and why we despise it but cannot escape it. WORKBENCH: TOTEM explores what is most important, language, and the hierarchy of the words we use to define things.

For his installation "WORKBENCH: TOTEM" Gabriel stacked five of his workbenches in a column form. This column could remind us of totem poles, monumental sculptures carved from large trees by cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. But:

WORKBENCH: TOTEM is not a story to be told. It's not a history lesson. It is a dialogue. It's a conversation about words and their uses. It's about objects and how to think about, and discuss them. It is a metaphor for the monumentality of language and you are invited to experience it. (Jason Gabriel)

WORKBENCH: TOTEM is a fragile construction because the single elements are not fixed together, like in a Jenga game. It is basically a composition of geometric cubes. The first element of the pile appears with the top up, the second rotated by 90° and so on. It is a permutation of possibilities, every direction is considered. In five steps the single workbench performs a rotation by 360°. By going around the column the viewer can study the geometric rhythm, block and cavity alternate. Smith's workbenches are sculptures first. They are form, texture, volume and invention. On the gallery wall Gabriel lists the different aspects, which apply to this work and crossed out the terms that don't. The only work that takes place on WORKBENCH: is contemplation.

JASON GABRIEL received his B.F.A. (emphasis on Ceramics and Painting) in 1998 from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, and his M.F.A. (emphasis on Fiber and Material Studies) in 2009 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been shown in several solo and group exhibitions in Chicago and the US. Jason Gabriel lives and works in Chicago.

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