Exploding Jack

In my previous show They Have to Seek It Out, I was ruminating on famous bodybuilders and their relationship to childhood toys and advertising. The work stewed on the constant stories of suffering after masculinity having left a man empty. It made me wonder about the appetites we fostered in children. What sense of self are we constructing that enables these cycles of violence? The work in this exhibition was developed simultaneously with some pieces in that show.

Exploding Jack presents a group of paintings on paper, a tangent of the “Jumping Jack” action figures. The figurines were inspired by a walk through midtown when I passed a supplement store. The owner had cut-out images of bodybuilders taped in the window, a sort-of veil of truncated bodies. One of the advertisements said “Where men become monsters …underground!” The poster featured “Zack King Khan, the underground monster” endorsing a product called “Hemo Rage Black.” Transfixed, I was reminded of toys I played with as a kid.

The toys, like every other boy-oriented plaything, featured impossibly muscle-bound men in camouflage pants and skimpy vests, all carrying big ole guns. They were marketed through animated tv shows we watched on Saturday mornings, and later reenact through playtime, each of us pretending to be killing machines. The last of our GI Joes would succumb to fireworks in Nick’s back yard, their exploded torsos and tiny limbs buried in a sand pit.

Back in midtown mid-daydream, I wondered if these bodies were not just temples of discipline, eating disorders, skin cancer and steroids, but the embodiment of the toys and entertainment of our adolescence. For decades prior, there had been a strange cycle of one-upmanship playing out in mainstream entertainment. Since Bruce Lee entered Hollywood as a bodybuilding martial artist, action movies would feature the likes of Jean Claude Van Damme, Wesley Snipes, Jet Li, and other trained fighters. But the most prominent would be actor-bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. Schwarzenegger, the former Mr. Universe, was so enormous, he easily played the role of a killer robot from the future. But the body builders I saw in midtown were far beyond the physique Schwarzenegger made popular. I couldn’t help but see Jay Cutler and his contemporaries as having no strength, but being fractured, strained, as fragile as a fully inflated balloon.

Back home, I would make the Jumping Jack action figures. The dolls would perform jumping-jacks when their string was yanked, and as they danced their image would fracture into parts. Made from jolly-rancher colored plastic, the dolls were adorned with decals of Jay Cutler’s body. The decals had been printed onto paper, and after cutting out the decals, a composition of body-shaped holes remained. It reminded me of the exploded GI Joes, of sticker sheets I would get with a new toy, or some Leon Golub painting of a mass grave he never actually made.

That sticker sheet would become inspiration for an editions project with Fernwey in 2018, and from there a stencil, which then composed the Exploding Jack series. This work exists as a passage within a cycle of building and exploding, composing and fracturing, and recombining. As such, I am very happy to share it within the context of a fellow artist’s studio, the place where such things happen. Much thanks to Jenny Halpern for the opportunity to share the series.

Ro Miller (b. 1987) was born in Columbus, Ohio. He received an MFA from SAIC in 2014, and continues to live and work in Chicago as an artist-curator. He has been a co-director at Julius Caesar Gallery since 2014, and co-founded Barely Fair in 2019. Recent exhibitions include The Suburban in Milwaukee, MONACO in St. Louis, along with HG, Fernway Gallery, Heaven Gallery, Triumph, and the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. His most recent show was a two-person show with Zebadiah Keneally at Patient Info.

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: Chicago, Cuff and Post, Ro Miller, West Town