Number 31 Used Birthday Candle (detail of 3), 2021, wood, flashe paint, microcrystalline wax, 35 x 14 x 3 inches
Number 31 Used Birthday Candle (detail of 1), 2021, wood, flashe paint, microcrystalline wax, 35 x 10 x 3 inches
Number 31 Used Birthday Candle (detail of 1), 2021, wood, flashe paint, microcrystalline wax, 35 x 10 x 3 inches
Number 0 Used Birthday Candle, 2021, wood, cardboard, fabric, epoxy resin, flashe paint, microcrystalline wax, 37 x 78 x 9 inches
Number 0 Used Birthday Candle (detail), 2021, wood, cardboard, fabric, epoxy resin, flashe paint, microcrystalline wax, 37 x 78 x 9 inches
Number 0 Used Birthday Candle (detail), 2021, wood, cardboard, fabric, epoxy resin, flashe paint, microcrystalline wax, 37 x 78 x 9 inches
Happy Birthday You Were Just Born
Bryan Jabs
May 18 - June 15, 2021
Existing somewhere between the anxiety of memory and the freedom of forgetting, Jabs’ colorful sculptures eerily address our psychological realities through implications of embodiment. Happy Birthday You Were Just Born’s oversized wax birthday candles function as memento mori addressing the ways in which our mortality is marked, measured, and celebrated. They are things kept in a shoe box or recovered through time travel as evidence of existence. The scale and construction of the candles play in the space of dreams—Are the candles big or are we small? Are they candles on a cake or cake themselves? Were we ever 0? The ubiquity of the idea of a “Happy Birthday” in lyrics, greeting cards, decor, and exclamations presents a limited context for the experience of a day commemorating the entire scope of one’s life. However sincerely wished, this very notion can set a stage for failure of expectations and performance, creating space to be filled with guilt and disappointment.
Statement by Rachel Stern
Bryan Jabs (b. 1987 in Hamilton, Bermuda) is a Philadelphia, PA based artist. He received his MFA from Columbia University in 2016, and his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2009.