The title of Jessalyn Aaland’s show, “Thank You for Your Waiting,” now at Swarm Gallery in Oakland sounds like an awkwardly translated phrase. But instead of the name sticking in your head immediately, the tiny yet surprising details of her collages do.
But these assemblages of miniscule cutout vintage ads, holographic and felt stickers of mini pizzas and other food we loved as kids aren’t kitschy or haphazard. In fact, one doesn’t even realize the pieces are mixed media at first.
Aaland poses the piles of objects and flora in spaces without regard for classic perspective. The resulting flatness is awkward, quirky and is what makes her pieces unique. She combines ridiculous details of a brick cell phone in a potted plant, jarring one’s expectations of an interior scene while also reminding us of the hilarity that such a large object would ever be a mobile device.
In “Point of Entry,” a pair of eyeglasses only a little larger than a fingernail clipping rest on a quilted leather chair, but the scene surprises overall because nearby lies a cartoon cat’s face getting squished by a trashcan.
Another piece, “A Way In,” involves the image of a landfill of Roman warriors mixed with Life cereal boxes, retro televisions and Nike cleats, topped off with the cheerful mixture of flowers, which seems to be Aaland’s signature touch. These images aren’t nostalgic subject matter like the glorified ’90s Nickelodeon shows that we get from Buzzfeed daily, but are the toys from Grandpa’s house that weren’t the best but still held value.
Aaland writes on her website to describe another one of her series, “Sometimes the person you need the most to talk with is yourself.” The reflection and nostalgia experienced when sifting through the details in each of her canvases are gentle and cute, reminding us of childhood’s inexplicable phases such as obsessions with smiley faces and desperation to win a blue ribbon. Most importantly, we are reminded of the imagination paired with the era of those objects.
Aaland describes these as “accumulations,” which is literal in one sense but in another sense explores what we accumulate due to our physical location, sexuality, gender, religion and ability. “A portion of what we accumulate is tangible, but most of it is not,” she writes on her website. What we choose to do with what we compile in our lives matters, and Aaland’s new material demonstrates a coupling of mild regret with optimism about recovering what we have decided to reject, forget and mark unimportant in our past.
The title of the show talks to these objects of our history as if they knew we had forgotten them but would return to them eventually. Now we remember these images and feel ashamed to have forgotten them in the first place. All we can express is our unexpected gratitude that they stayed the same despite our selective and fading memory.
Perhaps we are glad for these objects’ unchanging facades, which contradict the instability in our lives. So again the unusual title comes to mind: “Thank you for your waiting.” It’s a cluttered phrase that doesn’t make sense grammatically, at first. But this space that we live in doesn’t make sense all of the time either. The question of how and why we surround ourselves with things is one that Aaland politely, but cleverly, points out to us.
Many of her pieces seem to be the imagined dream interior design of a sticker collector and often include chairs. These chairs seem to ask for someone to fill them and be still for just a moment. We can finally look at what we may have missed and what we have forgotten a bit too easily and a bit too hastily.
When: Through April 21
Where: Swarm Gallery in Oakland
A.J. Kiyoizumi covers visual art. Contact her at [email protected]. Check her out on twitter at @Ajkazoo.