Jake Preval is an artist working in a variety of mediums spanning sculpture, photography, installation and performance.
These elements are often combined together in bodies of work that use black humour and a playful lexicon of materials and references, that oscillate between the makeshift and the monumental, to create spaces of speculative meaning that explore desire, queer identity and the conditions of sculpture.
In the process of isolating, photographing, distorting and re-casting images, objects and detritus from queer culture, his work teases out the complex relationship queer has with its own past and its theorised and lived realities. By placing himself at the centre of this dialogue, often in absurd and revealing manifestations, he offers himself up as a personal conduit through which these broader social and political questions may be opened out to an audience.
Whilst each body of work may shift its focus and materiality what remains steadfast is the use of humour as an affective mode of artistic exchange.