Borna Sammak
“All Dogs Are Pets,” installation view at JTT, New York, 2014 . Courtesy the Artist and JTT, New York Photography by Charles Benton

Every evening, after dinner, there is a teenager that wanders the streets of the Lower East Side, craving inspiration, searching for something to do, finding a beautiful skate spot or meeting a friend for a prank. He cannot figure out exactly what he needs deep within himself to fill the void of the life that awaits him, nor can he verbalize what would put an end to his search. So for now he just wants to have fun and crack jokes. Why not be open to wonderment? Is there a place where he could get all this, all these answers in an instant? What if the magic deli does exist, a deli able to deliver anything to anyone? My bet is that this is what Borna Sammak’s show at JTT is about. Sammak might have created such a place, where each artwork resonates with the wandering kid’s dreams.

The show is meticulously filled with Deli shop signs bearing surrealistic inscriptions, cartoon references, flickering digital compositions, stickers, collages and boardwalk t-shirts. Like his previous double solo show with Alex Da Corte at OKO in New York, Sammak keeps exploring the imagery and codes of the deli world, as if it were the modern Aladdin’s cave. The apparent disorder of the show also brings an energetic ring, together with the use of bright, primary colors and the diversity of media used. The messages are blurred and the signs are dismantled as if a bomb had exploded in the neighborhood, mixing the chaotic with the profuse.

“When I first started imagining the show, I thought it was going to be a sculpture show where all the stuff connected like a giant game of Mousetrap. What’s that called? A Rube Goldberg machine…” said Sammak. Indeed, there is an attempt to connect, a continuous flimsy line that holds, quite unsteadily, the pieces together. And yet, the impression of playfulness remains.