“Our lives have always been torn and put together and torn – people have always been pushed around. You see it in the streets, in the kids begging, those eyes, the way they look at you. Imagine being a parent, and having kids that have to be fed, but you have no money, – so what do you do – you have to commit a crime. But I don’t only reflect what is happening in South Africa, it’s a reflection of what is happening in this world.” – Kay Hassan

Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to announce, Recent Photographs, Kay Hassan’s inaugural exhibition at the gallery. Although best known for his large scale ‘constructions’ made of torn, reconfigured, and pasted pieces of printed billboard posters, Hassan works in numerous mediums including painting, collage, installation, video, sculpture, and photography. Hassan’s work is powerful no matter the medium or scale and the themes he explores—time, accumulation, rituals, trade, and waste-provide its unifying force.

Here Hassan presents a new series of photographs depicting shreds of clothing washed up on Mozambiques’ beaches. Colorful abstract compositions resemble Jackson Pollock drip paintings, landscapes, and rubbish heaps, that raise issues of overproduction, urban life, poverty, distribution and globalization, while documenting a Mozambican ritual in which individuals throw clothes of a deceased person into the ocean. This ability to mine a particular custom or fact of life and weave it into a larger narrative with universal implications is what makes Hassan’s art so impressive and establishes him as one of the worlds leading contemporary artists.