Jasper Marsalis

Emalin is pleased to present \m/’, a solo exhibition by Jasper Marsalis (b. 1995 in Los Angeles, CA, US). This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

In \m/’, Marsalis combines painting, drawing, sculpture, and live video feed coded onto an LED screen to draw the parallel that runs throughout his practice: that of being looked at as a performer, and consumed as an object. Whether working in the medium of music, performance, or exhibition-making, Marsalis poetically – often cheekily, sometimes dead seriously – abstracts the persistence of visual consumption, of our incessant looking. Switching between an illegibility that refuses and a naivety that submits, he scores the political stakes of performing to that gaze.

Jasper Marsalis (b. 1995 in Los Angeles, CA, US) graduated with a BFA from The Cooper Union, NY, in 2017. His recent solo exhibitions include Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles, US (2023); Emalin, London, UK (2022); Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, US (2020); and Svetlana, New York, US (2018). Recent and upcoming group exhibitions include the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, US (upcoming 2025); the Zurich Biennial, Kunsthalle Zurich, CH (2023); Nicoletta Fiorucci Collection, Monaco, MC (2023); Galerie Buchholz, Cologne, DE (2022); Gladstone Gallery, New York, US (2022); Emalin, London, UK (2021); Lehman College Art Gallery, New York, US (2020); cfcp, New York, US (2019); and The Cooper Union, New York, US (2017).

As a musician, Marsalis performs under the moniker Slauson Malone 1. Recent performances have taken place at Haus der Kunst, Munich, DE (2024); Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection, Paris, FR (2024); Volksbuhne, Berlin, DE (2024); Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY, US (2024); C2C, Turin, IT (2023); Le Guess Who?, Utrecht, NL (2023); ICA, London, UK (2022); Barbican, London, UK (2022); Abron Arts Center, New York, NY, US (2022); Cafe OTO, London, UK (2022); PhilaMoCA, Philadelphia, US (2021); and The Underground Museum, Los Angeles, US (2019). His publications include the albums Excelsior (2023); for Star (Crater Speak) (2022); Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Crater Speak) (2020); and A Quiet Farwell, 2016–2018 (Crater Speak) (2019), as well as the book Crater Speak (2020).