Jac Leirner | Hyperallergic

Aug 10 2023

By Valentina di Liscia and Lakshmi Rivera Amin

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Accumulation and classification are the guiding principles of Jac Leirner’s playful sculptures, built of everyday objects organized neatly into rows, piles, stacks, and towers. In the Brazilian artist’s hands, the prosaic miscellany of our quotidian existence — pen caps, bank notes, rolls of adhesive tape — becomes as beguiling as a covetable design object. Leirner’s sculpture of disembodied Lego figures, with a leaning tower of torsos on the far left and individual columns of little yellow heads, legs, and feet, is darkly absurd; a V-shaped wall piece crafted of end-to-end precision levels pokes innocent fun at the rigidity of Minimalism. Other works employ a similar logic in the service of local specificity: “Hardcore Drummer (Talco) I” uses remnants of drumsticks from São Paulo’s punk scene, while the collages “Village Inside I” and “II” (2023) are layered over in printed matter found across New York’s East Village neighborhood, from an Anthology Film Archives poster to a Bar Primi business card.