Jake Michael Singer is a South African multidisciplinary artist. In 2013, Singer completed his bachelors at Michaelis School of Fine Art, the University of Cape Town in Cape Town. He has also studied at Central Saint Martins in London.
Singer’s artistic practice is concerned with materiality and transformation of found objects and their teleologic societal evolution. His sculpture, which are bird-like symbols of transcendence, are made from thousands of steel pieces and created using techniques that draw on traditional thatching and emergent behaviour.
Emergent behaviour, or murmuration, is a system that does not depend on its individual parts, but on their relationship to one another. This phenomenon is considered to be the driver of evolution in many types of systems. It exists in the way birds flock to the building blocks of artificial neural networks. Singer uses this principle in the organisation of thousands of steel pieces, typically used for security fencing, to create a symbol of transcendence.
Since graduating, Singer has held six solo exhibitions at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (2019: Cape Town, South Africa); Matter Gallery, Toronto (2018) and Kalashnikovv Gallery (2018: Johannesburg, South Africa); Punt WG (2017: Amsterdam) and two exhibitions at Hazard Gallery (2016 and 2017: Johannesburg, South Africa).
Singer has participated in duo shows at Matter Gallery (2017: Toronto, Canada) and 50 Golbourne (2017: London, UK). Significant group shows by Singer have been on display at Emerge Art Fair (2014: Washington, DC, United States of America); Art Lima (2015); FNB Joburg Art Fair (2016: Johannesburg, South Africa); Dak’art in Senegal (2016: Senegal); Also Known As Africa (AKAA) in (2016: Paris) and; Cape Town Art Fair (2017: Cape Town, South Africa). He has also shown in Basel, Venice, Los Angeles and Perth. Recently, he was selected as an apprentice for Aida Muluneh in the Kampala Biennale curated by Simon Njami (2018). In 2012, Singer assisted William Kentridge with the exhibition, The Refusal of Time.
Singer is distinguished by a large scale steel sculpture at the top of the W+A Building, Johannesburg.
Jake Michael Singer is featured in the Zeitz MOCAA exhibition Still here tomorrow to high five you yesterday… (2019).