Failure is a condition of living; repetitive and stale, exhaustive but necessary. If time is money, energy is value in the studio. The metric for success is subjective; each standard marked by another, the next best thing.

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Jason Gringler's solo presentation studio is anchored by material consequence and the singularity of labor. studio is a composite of refuse; dead machines, offcuts, and residue from previous forms that take up space in corners and on shelves. Storage hoards energy, accumulating relics of past attempts since stripped of their function. The relics wait with the charge of neglected potential. Flames and blades, layered inches of tracked plexiglass sealed shut, with entry only possible by extreme force. To bond, the adhesive must form intimate contact with the substrate, an alchemical and chemical effect. Materials cure and fuse for safekeeping.

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Gringler makes use of failure through a process of resurrection, recycling distaste, and balancing acceptance and transformation, but fabricated to conceal. Confined and breathless objects framed by steel, dust, resin, acrylic glass, and rust—candles, silicone, enamel paint, tape, pigment, wood, epoxy, wax—imply industrial and technological obsolescence, a cruel preservation. Here, refusal is seductive. Strained contradictions turned inward and away, imperceptible processes of mechanical connection.

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Failure is a swing and a miss. Jason Gringler's failures reanimate with renewed tension and dense formation: cut, join, cast, mold, weld, and cure—the properties of translation and material dependence. studio presents a range of dissent, where formal constructions of embedded failure become obscure.

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– Claire Sammut