BORNA SAMMAK

Borna Sammak, Not Yet Titled, 2021. Beach towel and embroidery on canvas, 50 x 38 inches. Photography by Charles Benton. Courtesy of the artist and JTT, New York.

Borna Sammak’s “Beach Towel Paintings B/W Year in Words 4,” the Brooklyn-based artist’s latest solo show at JTT, draws upon the symbols of contemporary culture to create a flowing installation and also, wall works. It being summer, beach paintings are in season. Here, on these works on canvas, are a number of mosaiced and embroidered beach towels, making up the shapes of a leopard, a dolphin, little critters caught in the leaves, a flaming unicorn. Reflecting a kind of sunniness too, the ubiquitous “Untitled” is met with a rhetorical flourish: “Not Yet Titled.”

Inverting the typical order of pressing tee-shirts with popularized slogans, Uncle Sam is rolling up his shirtsleeves in service of, as the canvas reads in a glittery Comic Sans-font letters: “gay agenda.” It serves as cornerstone to the installation of Year in Words 4 (2021), spread across both walls and curving around them in a continuous flow dotted with motherboards and brain-melting, meme-y LED screens—a Western Beef sign, an Instagram screengrab, even Bob Ross makes a cameo—which seem to be them- selves melting in the heat, oozing yellow cords.