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Gilles Jacot at Windhager von Kaenel

Solo exhibition «Plat du jour», April 11 until June 14, 2025

Artists

Gilles Jacot

Institution

Windhager von Kaenel

Location

Zug

Download

Press release (PDF)

Website

windhagervonkaenel.com

Exhibition View Solo Show Gilles Jacot «Plat du jour» at Windhager von Kaenel, Zug, 2025 / Photo: Oliver Kümmerli / Courtesy: the artist and Windhager von Kaenel

Plat du jour is what’s available. It’s what’s on hand, leftover, in season. It is what gets made with care but without pretence. The building you are standing in, much like those depicted on the panels around you, doesn’t quite fit this description. These pristinely rendered exteriors that have come to populate urban spaces point to a fictional reality where neither weather nor seasons exist - as Jacot hints at in the titles ‘it’s always summer and the sky is blue’. These images act as forecasts of a non-existent future, habitually clad around construction sites to mask their messy, in-between state, a form of severance claiming, ‘I swear, it’ll be worth it’. This deranged form of diluted utopianism has become emblematic of neoliberalism’s phoney prioritisation of capital over community. Urban space today, according to Keller Easterling, has become ‘mobile, monetised technology’—detached from local contexts, easily replicated, and optimised for flow. Taking advantage of a rental car provided through one of his day jobs, Jacot spent some nights driving through Paris dismantling these advertising boards, stripping them of text and logos, leaving only the rendered images —now veiled in sheer fabric that casts the buildings in a soft fog. Jacot’s objets volés operate as a subtle act of détournement, a way of navigating the city with open eyes, reimagining it through movement and play, as appro-priated fragments are reoriented toward something stranger.

This is what Hannah Arendt might call an embodied form of praxis, the vita activa that says that true political life happens through action in the public realm. In this logic, the appropriated panels take on a similar role to the child’s crayon, as it sprawls beyond the script across apartment walls. These are declarations of presence, an unanticipated form of engagement that marks the friction between how space is imaged and lived. Jacot’s work meditates on images in their many states—render, forecast, sketch, projection—and the slippery translation of representation into material. Future projections, no matter how polished, are always fragile. And space, as ever, is contested: delegated, reinterpreted, resisted through use.

Plat du jour gathers works that attend to what is immediate, necessary, real. The dish of the day is by nature a humble and pragmatic choice. It is the workers’ lunch, the public bench, the shared courtyard. This exhibition reflects a form of spatial improvisation rooted not in spectacle, but presence.

Exhibition View Solo Show Gilles Jacot «Plat du jour; view on Gilles Jacot, it’s always summer and the sky is blue, 2025, alu dibond advertising boad, fabric, industrial paint, 200 x 150 x 0.5cm» at Windhager von Kaenel, Zug, 2025 / Photo: Oliver Kümmerli / Courtesy: the artist and Windhager von Kaenel

Exhibition View Solo Show Gilles Jacot «Plat du jour; view on Gilles Jacot, Sorted, projected, 2025, beamer, media-player, 38 x 65cm» at Windhager von Kaenel, Zug, 2025 / Photo: Oliver Kümmerli / Courtesy: the artist and Windhager von Kaenel

Exhibition View Solo Show Gilles Jacot «Plat du jour» at Windhager von Kaenel, Zug, 2025 / Photo: Oliver Kümmerli / Courtesy: the artist and Windhager von Kaenel

Exhibition View Solo Show Gilles Jacot «Plat du jour; view on Gilles Jacot Total excel, 2025 alu dibond advertising board, inkjet print on photopaper, paper, tape, 33 x 50 x 0.5cm» at Windhager von Kaenel, Zug, 2025 / Photo: Oliver Kümmerli / Courtesy: the artist and Windhager von Kaenel

Exhibition View Solo Show Gilles Jacot «Plat du jour; view on Gilles Jacot Total excel, 2025 alu dibond advertising board, inkjet print on photopaper, paper, tape, 33 x 50 x 0.5cm (detail)» at Windhager von Kaenel, Zug, 2025 / Photo: Oliver Kümmerli / Courtesy: the artist and Windhager von Kaenel

Exhibition View Solo Show Gilles Jacot «Plat du jour» at Windhager von Kaenel, Zug, 2025 / Photo: Oliver Kümmerli / Courtesy: the artist and Windhager von Kaenel

Exhibition View Solo Show Gilles Jacot «Plat du jour; view on Gilles Jacot, Family portrait, 2025, digital print on A4 paper, reading lamp, 65 x 40 x 30cm» at Windhager von Kaenel, Zug, 2025 / Photo: Oliver Kümmerli / Courtesy: the artist and Windhager von Kaenel

Exhibition View Solo Show Gilles Jacot «Plat du jour; view on Gilles Jacot, Family portrait, 2025, digital print on A4 paper» at Windhager von Kaenel, Zug, 2025 / Photo: Oliver Kümmerli / Courtesy: the artist and Windhager von Kaenel

Exhibition View Solo Show Gilles Jacot «Plat du jour» at Windhager von Kaenel, Zug, 2025 / Photo: Oliver Kümmerli / Courtesy: the artist and Windhager von Kaenel