KELLY JAZVAC

FIVE MILLION TRILLION TRILLION

JULY 11 - AUGUST 10, 2024

FIERMAN presents Five Million Trillion Trillion, a solo exhibition by Canadian artist Kelly Jazvac, her third with the gallery.  Jazvac is known for her multifaceted, interdisciplinary investigation of synthetic plastic, its omnipresence and its deleterious impact on the natural world.  

Today’s most commonly-used plastics emerged out of war and violence. Production of synthetic material amped up intensely during World War II as technological developments for new synthetic plastics (nylon, Teflon, polyester, acrylic, silicones and epoxies) raced to innovate/improve machines of war (radios, planes, parachutes) and meet the demand to replace natural materials under wartime embargo (wool, silk, shellac, casein).  Since then, global plastic production continues to increase year after year, despite the dire and clear documentation of its environmental ramifications. Of plastics produced, polyvinylchloride ( PVC, or simply ‘vinyl’) is widely considered the most toxic type of plastic. 14 billion pounds of PVC are produced in the US each year, of which 75% of is used by the building and construction industry. 

Meanwhile, there exists bacteria in the soil, water, and even in salt water, that makes a form of bioplastic in its cells. This form of plastic, polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), is fully compostable, non-toxic, and bio-compatible with the human body.  There are an estimated five million trillion trillion bacteria alive on Earth right now. What else are they building and making, slowly, gracefully, and in sync with a whole system of living beings around them? 

In Five Million Trillion Trillion Jazvac contrasts two types of plastic with wildly different material histories and anatomies: PVC and PHB. PVC from advertising billboards salvaged across Canada, the US, and Mexico, all promoting commercial land development and construction, interacts sculpturally with PHB, grown by bacteria in Dr. Carlos Filipe Peña Malacara’s lab at the Instituto de Biotechnología at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Paired alongside one another, the vinyl formally chases the contours and lines of the naturally-derived, raw PHB plastic. Jazvac offers this juxtaposition of the industrial and the organic in her search to visualize the deliberately occluded, and to look for ways to envision a paradigm shift through art and scientific collaboration. 

This exhibition is the midpoint of a year of research on non-toxic materials and the social histories they contain. Jazvac is currently in residence at the Conseils des Arts et Lettres Québec residency in New York City and collaborating with the Healthy Materials Lab at Parson’s the New School. Earlier in the year, she was invited to Dr. Peña Malacara’s lab at the Instituto de Biotechnología at UNAM in Mexico as part of an ongoing collaboration on bioplastics. Jazvac is also a founding member of the Synthetic Collective, which includes scientists, artists, and humanists. The work of this research group is highly influential on Jazvac’s artistic practice. Her recent exhibitions include Broken Nature at The Museum of Modern Art (New York); The Musée D’Art Contemporain (Montréal); the Eli and Edyth Broad Museum (East Lansing); Ujazdowski Castle CCA (Warsaw); and Galerie Nicolas Robert (Montréal). Her work has been written about in National Geographic, e-flux Journal, Hyperallergic, Art Forum, The New Yorker, Canadian Art Magazine and The Brooklyn Rail. Her co-authored art/science research has been published in scientific journals including Nature Reviews, GSA Today, and Science of the Total Environment.  Jazvac is based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal where she is an Associate Professor in Studio Arts at Concordia University. 

The artist would like to thank Dr. Carlos Filipe Peña Malacara, Claudia Aguirre, Rosa Elia Quiroz, Zoë Heyn-Jones, Lorna Bauer, Jon Knowles, Théo Bignon, Rixt de Boer, Alyson Akers, Tom Simpkins, Jaqueline Godínez Camacho, Paola Aldama, and Charlie Jazvac.