Unanimous Consent Back to homepage

For Copycat, Gina Folly and Judith Kakon’s first joint exhibition, some 1000 photographs were produced. The two artists used the opportunity to observe and reflect on one another – both with and without a camera. Judith was thus Gina’s material and Gina Judith’s. In the form of “pairings”, the focus is directed both to the person of the other and her artistic work. The latter insofar as emphasis is placed not only on the manner of production, but also on the genesis of each other’s artworks: Thus, unrealised and scrapped artworks, experimental pieces, studies and material samples accumulated in the studios of these two artists, serve as visual carriers of classic-looking portraits.

Judith Kakon and Gina Folly are not – as one might be led to suppose by the exhibition’s faintly ironic title – engaging in some act of “malicious” appropriation. Nor do they make use of their faces to “label” the works of the other artist. Each rather appropriates foreign and yet familiar elements of the other’s oeuvre to support and champion the work and personality that informs them. Inspiration, conceptual experimentation, works of art and their impact are all duly honoured and valued by way of reconsideration, interpretation and the overlapping of the various levels of which they are each composed. And it is by virtue of these approaches that both the individual and the work are, as it were, reflected and restaged. The things in which they have been privately involved over the years – both as close friends and as artists – are reinterpreted, materialised and hence enhanced. The process of selection and creation of new contexts and realities are crucial aspects in this process, which is inevitably characterised by human existence and its inherent inconsistencies, as well as by responsibility, trust and agreement. Thus, trivialities can assume a central place, whereas seemingly established memory systems may become scrambled. In Copycat, the artists also reveal a universal sphere for thought, for it is virtually unimaginable to ignore just how important it is to work mentally and physically while at the same time turning one’s back to the outside world, and hence how vital is the role played in this process by mutual support and critical enquiry.

I would like to thank you both for your friendship, your generosity and endless patience, as well as for the temper and character of your thinking, which I have found at once formative and inspiring. My thanks also extend, of course, to the creators of unanimous consent, without whose trust the project could never have come to fruition, and to Justin Morris for translating this text. And, naturally, to the foundation and the institutions that supported us financially, namely, the Dr Georg and Josi Guggenheim Stiftung, Pro Helvetia, Kultur Stadt Zürich and the Kanton Zürich.

Text: Roger Meier

Translation: Justin Morris

-

Installation Views from Gina Folly & Judith Kakon “Copycat”

Photos by Philip Ullrich

Courtesy of unanimous consent and the artists