Jacob Tonski: Striking Balance

This Monday’s class was very exciting. We were very lucky to not only have the artist Jacob Tonski’s Striking Balance exhibition in our own Pearl Conard Art Gallery, but also to attend his lecture. Although Jacob Tonski’s work is fascinating and inspiring on its own, I could never have appreciated the depth of his pieces had I not heard his explanation of them first.

In his lecture, Jacob Tonski shared thought provoking insights about the world. It is the context of his world perception, I think, that makes his work so interesting. When he indirectly described his work in the balance exhibition through stories about the Burning Man event, he said that he found it very interesting to see how quickly people can adapt to the very different environment of Burning Man. People come from busy jobs and careers to the Navada desert and are somehow able to take on the very contrasting lifestyle of Burning Man for the short time that they attend the festival. We can adapt quickly and fundamentally, he said, “if our environment expects it of us.” To see the physical balance of his artwork in the gallery and understand that it was partly implying emotional adaptation in human beings created an entirely different experience than what I could have expected had I not heard him speak. I am very glad that I had the opportunity to do so.

A mind blowing piece of artwork in Jacob Tonski’s exhibition was the balancing couch which stood above everything else in the gallery. The Victorian couch stands upright unsupported in the middle of the room, extending its length toward the ceiling while touching the ground with only a single leg. It functions so well that one might be tempted to assume that its balance has been faked by suspension from the rafters or being bolted to the floor. As we saw in the incredible videos in Tonski's lecture, however, the couch is in fact balanced by a brilliant contrivance hidden beneath the cushions. He spent a year designing the machine which balances itself on a point in real time by rotating perpendicular disks. When one stands before the couch in person, the humming of the machine and the small, constant adjustment to its balance taking place in real time can be observed and are something to behold.  To see the piece as an example of human adaptation and the precarious balance of our lives was profound.

Jacob Tonski's work can be seen on his website: www.jacobtonski.com