Exhibition Text by Camille Bacon

“I think artists are inherently poetic” says Jaylon Hicks on the subject of his debut solo-exhibition, Gothica. To Hicks’ point, poetry, at its core, is the process of putting physical form – whether it be through language or, in this case, through images and objects – to dimensions of being that are ineffable, but tangibly felt nonetheless. To this end, the exhibition serves as a gestural reminder of our inalienable, yet often inarticulable, responsibility to the earth and the myriad lifeforms it sustains (including, but not limited to, our own). Additionally, Gothica is invested in expanding what we mean when we speak of “nature” to include the human species, thereby challenging the human/nature binary and positioning nature, in all its forms, as teachers and collaborators, rather than as entities from which to extract.

Across photography, painting, sculpture and mixed-media work made between 2015-2023, Hicks elucidates a dual concern that is indeed as poetic as it is practical, and as cryptic as it is romantic: With apocalypse beckoning around every corner, what will it take for us to remain here on earth? And, once we have deduced a pathway for collective survival, how can we nurture one another with renewed urgency through the emotional, psychic, and spiritual labor that world-building demands?

As an abiding student of material science, plastic has long interested Hicks and forms the physical basis of many works in the exhibition. The artist recalls strolling on the beach and seeing droves of plastic washed up and littering the shoreline, at which point he began researching the material more actively and notes reading “The Water Book” by Alok Jha as a moment of profound catalysis in his practice. After deepening his knowledge, he realized its ubiquity and indestructibility positions plastic as a compelling material to spin into art, and as a means of bringing physical form to his ponderings around how one might attend to their commitment to environmental awareness. From here, he began to understand plastic as a metaphor for our contemporary condition and, because of its symbolic value, uses it to illuminate how capitalism, hyper-consumerism, and commodification alienates us from our relationship with the land.

To this end, the exhibition includes (Untitled) Protest, which depicts a shopping cart set ablaze during the Summer of 2020 in Minneapolis, where the artist resides. Here, he was thinking again about consumerism and what it means to destroy a symbol of commodification. The prominence of fire hints at destruction; And yet, the blistering flames are captured so vividly that one might also wonder what will spring from the ashes it will eventually become, thereby tying the image into the larger context of the political alchemy that occurred in the United States across the last two years.

Gothica also features four works from the artist’s Ex series, made with expanded polystyrene, among other materials. While he was reading Willem De Koonig’s memoir, Hicks happened upon a work titled Excavation, and deepened his thinking about the prefix ‘ex,’ which is used to denote that from what something came and, for the artist, serves as a means of “manifesting a spiritual connection to the earth.” The typeface in all four works is a riff on the Fedex wordmark, through which Hicks nods towards his understanding of artists as messengers or transmitters of knowledge, just as the international shipping company couriers information on a daily basis. In Hicks’ own mind, these works are not only a means of questioning his own existence as a messenger, but also feel like a “landmark” in his practice in their coalescence of conceptual and aesthetic rigor.

Additionally, two watercolor paintings, Untitled (Sweetgum Leaf) and Untitled (Hello), the former of which renders a leaf and the latter of which figures a tin-can phone, are also featured. Here, the artist’s painterly skill shines through most poignantly. Untitled zeros in on a singular sweetgum leaf, which is scaled, colored and detailed to match its referent. The making of both Untitled and Untitled (Hello) allowed Hicks to hone his technical ability, while still staying true to his interest in caring for natural phenomena. He expresses such care through the meticulous rendering of the leaf’s arterial system and the tin-can phone’s gleaming surfaces. It is in encountering these watercolors that audiences can access some levity and counteract the themes across Gothica that take on more density. With Untitled (Hello), Hicks’ sentimentality and poeticism shines through most acutely. He recalls the tin-can phones he used to use as a child to communicate with friends and invokes them here as an analogy for the human capacity to communicate with another person without a proper phone. This work speaks to the ways two bodies, through the development of earnest intimacy, can grow telepathic and sensitive to each other’s needs, even if they are not spoken or audibly communicated. For Hicks, the connection of the two cans via the string also references the fact that we, as humans, are always networked, even through unseen modes like affect, for instance.  

All in all, Gothica is a testament not only to the fortitude and ingenuity of Hicks’ creative mind, but also serves as a place to ponder the direction our world is heading and consider how we may course correct. Through the artist’s generous gestures, he offers us the chance to look out towards one possible horizon – that which depends on extraction and exploitation to secure itself – and to imagine alternative modes of being that honor all life forms and care for the totality of what breathes with us once we exit the gallery doors.