JACOB CIOCCI
NO TRUE THOUGHTS:
8 Principles for Rich Dynamic Living, Greedy Humpty Opening to Angles, Mental Spirit Magic Mind Scanners, Skater’s Waltz, THE IBM Employee Theme Song, and some new FAMILIARS
AUG. 25 through SEPT. 21, 2023

Opening Reception:
Friday August 25, 8–11pm

Musical Performance by
Fire-Toolz

“NO TRUE THOUGHTS”, Jacob Ciocci’s first solo exhibition at Soccer Club Club presents 2 new bodies of work: a hypnotic collection of fast-paced digital video loops known as “The Familiars,” and an assortment of cluttered, digitally manipulated “flat-lay” photographs.

In traditional “flat-lay” photography consumer products such as facial creams and wireless keyboards are neatly photographed from above, along with items like notepads, tasteful flower arrangements, and sunglasses. When seen within one’s social media feed, these photos represent an attainable dream-life, where everything you own is well-made, in it’s proper place, and functioning as planned for the purpose of making your life more beautiful, productive, and peaceful. Ciocci’s flat-lay photographs by contrast are intentionally chaotic and noisy, featuring broken, obsolete, or forgotten items bought at junk stores intermingling with ubiquitous signifiers of real domestic life like dirty carpets, smart phones with cracked screens, a jumble of USB chargers, or Crocks. These items are digitally stitched together using Photoshop’s Content-Aware Fill function with various “dream objects” Ciocci finds while searching online auction sites like Ebay. Found photos of bootleg Monster Energy T-shirts, obsolete video game cartridges, and overly-designed calculators are composited into Ciocci’s own photographs in a haphazard and error-prone fashion, resulting in a kind of broken fantasy version of Ciocci’s own personal life brand.

“The Familiars” are short, frenetic loops made on Ciocci’s smart phone while waiting for the train, on the elliptical machine at the gym, or before falling asleep. These video loops, often posted to Ciocci’s Instagram account, feature quick-cut edits of Ciocci’s everyday life. They document the inadvertent moments of banal humor and sublime absurdity that stand out to Ciocci as he manages his daily routine as a father, artist, and smart phone user. Many of the clips in these video works were taken by or in collaboration with Ciocci’s 4-year old son, who has currently maxed out Ciocci’s phone storage with hours of shaky, blurry, or incomprehensible footage of carpets, foreheads, and feet. Ciocci attempts to edit any and all of this footage together on his phone as quickly as possible, so as not to over think things, intuitively adding emojis, doodles, and an array of “preset” effects to these short, ridiculous portraits.

Seen together these two bodies of work are about the lovable, disgusting, curious, banal and endless stream of junk that encircles us in our domestic, public, and online lives, as we simply try to get through the day without falling apart. As the sun sets, staring at the carpet or looking at our phones, we struggle to comprehend what objects or moments feel real. We grasp and sort, move things around, looking for anything that stands out from within the piles of stuff and the streams of content. For this exhibition Ciocci invites us to sit with him in the space between the uncanny and the boring, sifting together through this confusing, overwhelming and hilarious mess.

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