Focus Group 5, a new group show at Von Ammon in Washington includes works of the moment, some of which are also throwbacks.
There are works by six artists: Liz Craft, Catharine Czudej, Ignacio Gatica, Tony Matelli, and Banks Violette, and three early works on paper by Jacob Kassay.
These small compositions are vinyl stickers of the US flag in various mirrored configurations. They remind me of the incredible little stack of flags on plastic that Jasper Johns loaned to the recent show of flag works at Craig Starr.
Like Johns, Kassay was working with the flag as an image and an object for several years before he got massive art world attention. Unlike Johns’s, Kassay’s flags have been much less widely seen. Also, it’s not clear whether he’s left the motif behind.
Though it’s been lost in a hall of silvered mirrors since, when Kassay popped in 2009, a flag-related installation was like his only Google image. That massive textile work, draped like an awning, was made by sewing together four flags, minus the cantons, So where there were stars, there was a large, rectangular void.
I’d thought of this work recently, and tried to find an image of it. [I’d been reminded of it while seeing the extraordinary, striped tarp, with two cutouts for doors, that covers the repaired signage on the Kennedy Center.] While searching, I found another early Kassay on perforated paper, which upended what I understood and wrote about the incredible sculpture/painting from his breakout show at Eleven Rivington. So I have updated that post.
Focus Group 5 at Von Ammon, by appt, 16 June-31 Aug 2026 [vonammon.net]
Previously, from 2020/2021/2026: Ur-Kassay