A melancholic feeling clings to Jacob Ciocci’s work. It’s conveyed through images of failure—like a Barney the Dinosaur parade float that deflates again and again in why so many americans feel so powerless (all works 2015), a video that plays on a flat screen laid on the floor—but also in the listlessly distant surfaces of his paintings. Ciocci transfers digital collages to plywood with UV ink, pressing the bulky pixels of enlarged low-quality images on the splintery grain of the reconstituted wood. The washes that bleed from the background-painted, scanned and printed-look ghostly. In #connect, #findingthe#connections, – therapy, -bank of america, -toilet paper, the title’s hashtags are written in blue and underlined, the way hyperlinks appear on Craigslist and other older sites. These double promises of contact without a hint of who or what is on the other side drive home the condition of the absent figure that Ciocci’s paintings so poignantly portray: a yearning user, alone and adrift.
Pictured: Jacob Ciocci:â?¨ What’s Next, 2015,â?¨ mannequin, windshield wiper motor, digital print on coroplast, various hardware and fabric; at Interstate Projects.