We Will Meet Again in the Field

Words spoken by his uncle, following the death of his father, become the gesture, the parting curtain, an invitation to Jake Michael Singer’s exhibition – ‘We will meet again in the field’ / ‘Ons sal weer in die veld ontmoet’. A solace, a promise, a consolation, these words are intended to heal. But they are also mortally perplexing, because, beyond hope, beyond belief, there lies no certainty. This quandary, however, is not Singer’s. Doubt is not circumspection. And uncertainly is as exotic as it is beautiful. Few artists combine an unknowing yet knowing agency as well as Singer. His sculptures and his paintings allow for both.

Echoing the Bhagavad Gita, Singer speaks of ‘The field and the knower of the field’, nature and consciousness, spirit and being. All is one. Even in a world as degraded as ours, as abased, there remains an eternal continuance, despite ever-shifting form. It is this spirit and principle that anchors the radical fragility of Singer’s sculptures and paintings. Never adamantine, never quite certain, Singer’s creatures, or phenomena, take flight, hurtle, plunge, pivot, teeter. Ever gestural, never nominal, his sculptures and paintings speak to our mortality – the field we long to return to, from which we might be forever exiled, or to which we might return. This lack of certainty is not speculative openness; it is the artist’s fundament. How protective is belief? In a maelstrom, is it not better to abandon what holds one prisoner?

In Singer’s work precarity is key. The centre holds yet doesn’t. A fulcrum is as inspired as it is expedient. There is no known core to the universe, a being, an object – matter. We sense this when we encounter Singer’s sculptures. They are ascendent, it is true, but they are as bonded, as earthed. This is because, for Singer, we remain caught between worlds. The wonder and beauty that his works elicit, stems from this brutally tender realization. We see it in the paintings too. In the tumult that writhes through them. In a topographical meltdown, the sky a fission flare, the aqueous earth a shiver. Roiling cloud. Molten land.  

As we walk through Singer’s Johannesburg studio, from his flashing electric blue world of welded steel to his quiet yet restless realm of paintings, it is the desire to connect structure and passion that matters most. It is worth noting, here, that welding sparks are incandescent particles, reaffirming the synergy of solidity and the atomic, substance and its intrinsic mystery. In his outstretched hand Singer holds a shard of smelted sludge, its sculptural delineation wondrous. With Singer as my guide, I’m reminded of the lines from James Blake’s song, I’ll Come Too … ‘I’ll go under your wing / I’ll slot right in between the / Cracks between’…  - Ashraf Jamal