Untitled 2009

This shimmering, untitled piece was made by Jacob Kassay, and looking at its surface, you get a sense of art-making as a real, unfolding process. Kassay’s got a way of making the material itself—here, this gorgeous, reflective surface—the real subject. The way the light plays across it, almost like a photograph slowly developing. The texture, the color, it all feels incredibly present. There’s an area down near the bottom, where the darkness pools, thick and opaque. It’s not just a mark, it’s an event, a physical encounter between artist and material, where something unforeseen came into being. It reminds me of some of Gerhard Richter's experiments with surface and reflection; how they used the canvas to think about how we look at things, really closely, and how art is an ongoing conversation. It’s not about answers, it’s about how many questions we can ask.