Jayce Salloum

Jayce Salloum is recognized for a large body of photography and video production that has been exhibited and screened since 1979. His work has been presented in venues as varied as storefronts in New York and San Diego to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Having lived abroad for numerous years, Salloum now makes Vancouver his home base.

The title 22oz. THUNDERBOLT comes from a fragment of advertising represented in one of the photographs in the exhibition. This body of work, presented in an installation format, continues Salloum’s long-held interest in the idea of street photography and documentary traditions, and the ways in which they intersect with the actual experience of the urban environment. He is also a collector of images and considers his artmaking process akin to that of a creative archivist.

Most of the images in 22oz. THUNDERBOLT are photographed in a seemingly spontaneous manner, evoking the fragmented and peripheral information that one encounters while walking through the city. The syncopated arrangement on the walls accentuates a layered and impressionistic reading of the urban environment. While many of the images capture ephemeral moments — a view from a car window, street scenes and buildings — the exhibition consists primarily of an accumulation of images of storefronts and window displays. These contained yet highly public spaces give emphasis to a relationship between idiosyncratic and subjective modes of display, and the intentions of consumerist appeal, which Salloum points out are “specifically the places in between private and public space.” In this exhibition, the urban environment was filled with signs of diverse identities, desires and needs, and we must find our own space within it.