NEW YORK – BORNA SAMMAK: “BEACH TOWEL PAINTINGS B/W YEAR IN WORDS 4″

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.

Artist Borna Sammak opens a new show at JTT this month, continuing his work drawing on symbols and signage from contemporary pop culture and the modern urban landscape to create a dizzying exploration of aesthetics and meaning in our hyperconnected textual and graphical landscape. Featuring a series of works rendered with beach towels as well as a large-scale digital video installation, the show furthers Sammak’s enigmatic investigations of meaning and expression through the materials of the modern landscape.

Borna Sammak, Beach Towel Paintings B/W Year in Words 4 (Installation View), via JTT

Sammak’s work as often pulled at the strings of language and meaning, using street signs and other borrowed linguistic fragments to explore the modern condition. Wholesale clothing storefronts, grocery store graphics, and other images borrowed in full from the modern urban environment dot the artist’s work, presenting the pieces as a meditation on meaning and symbolism in the contemporary image. Graphics from discount grocery store Western Beef mingles with depictions of Uncle Sam, a selection of distinct questions about the meaning and experience of modern American being.

Borna Sammak, Year in Words 4 (detail) (2021), via JTT

The other major work on view, Year in Words 4 (2021), spreads across the gallery, a series of LED Screens dotted with memes, photos, news headlines, and other fragments that speak to the volatility and violence of the past year. Drawing on the modern language of click-bait news, easily digestible writing, personal photos and memes, the image creates a dense collage of signifiers and symbols, a fitting counterpoint to the collages nearby. Here, treating these fragments journalistically, the piece becomes a fitting reflection of a year that has so often felt floating in uncertainty, waiting to return to a normal that never felt quite right to begin with.

Borna Sammak, Year in Words 4 (2021), via JTT