Jelena Telecki

Kaput is Jelena Telecki’s second solo exhibition with 1301SW, and first major presentation in her home city of Sydney since her 2024 exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. An exhibition primarily composed of painting, Kaput overarchingly explores the experience of being done for; as the artist herself notes:

“What came first: the never-ending cliché of doomscrolling, or did it all emerge from within? At the same time sudden and slow in coming, this now-familiar sense of a collapse didn’t come as a surprise. Yet I was surprised: not ready for it. Kaput is a series of work tracing the experience of being done-for: finished.

My fall was by no means heroic, meaningful, or brought upon by a loss (of a loved one, good health, or livelihood). Rather unceremoniously, I became être capot; I ran out of all the “tricks.” The world that previously offered a pleasant distraction could no longer do it. And painting, which was always a way out, migrated somewhere I had no access to. There was no sorrow to this discovery – it simply arrived to me (or perhaps it was me arriving to it) gradually, like greying hair and smokers’ lines. As a result, I became interested in what felt like an endpoint, so turning to artists proclaiming the end of painting and art seemed like the only possible destination.”