by Jesse Slater // Oct. 3, 2025
This article is part of our feature topic Weird.
Etched on the glass facade of Galerie Molitor, the breathy white slashes of thousands of tally marks introduce ‘The Contractor,’ an exhibition by Jesse Darling. The tallies are hectic and incessant; some scrawled, some smudged about with fingerprints. Whatever they’re totting up, the counting itself has started to unravel. They remind me suddenly of flailing bodies, chaotic under the absurdity of conforming to a neat structure. Already, at the threshold of the exhibition, order is breaking down into something unstable—things are getting weird.
Jesse Darling: ‘The Contractor,’ 2025, installation view at Galerie Molitor // Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Molitor, photo by Marjorie Brunet Plaza
Heading inside, some works are easily recognizable as Darling’s, such as his walking aid sculptures in the basement of the gallery. ‘Collapsed Cane’ (2022) is a steel support bent out of shape. It cowers under a vitrine displaying a row of intimidating archival binders, the type you might keep your paperwork in. Here, the binder’s contents are angular slabs of grey concrete. The cane looks frail beneath the weight of all that bureaucracy. Looking closer, I see that one of the rigid metal legs of the vitrine has been replaced with a crutch too, the vitrine itself now in need of support. Also made in 2022, ‘Crawling Cane’ arcs dextrously across the gallery floor in a kind of somersault. It reminds me of the twisted shapes we assume, the effort we put in, for the sake of getting by. The supports, being real about the strain, are allowed to bend, released from the pressure of being useful.
Jesse Darling: ‘The Contractor,’ 2025, installation view at Galerie Molitor // Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Molitor, photo by Marjorie Brunet Plaza
Newer works have a sharper edge. ‘Opa 2 (Presslufthammer Bernhard),’ made in 2023 and updated this year, is a crutch modified with a jackhammer blade, fastened first with bandage, then spiralling white ribbon. Held upright by fishing wire, it balances precariously on the blade’s edge. ‘Opa 2’ feels anarchic to me: instead of a stable walking aid, the crutch is a DIY instrument of dissent, held together with discarded materials scavenged from the collapse around it.
It’s this shift in use, this estrangement from “purpose,” that reminds me of Jack Halberstam’s description of empty swimming pools in ‘The Queer Art of Failure.’ According to Halberstam, they stand “like ruins,” embodying “the decay of the commodity, the queerness of the disassociation of use from value.” Darling’s canes feel similar—they reject their original purpose, revolting against the system and normativity, instead. I can’t help but think that the fiercer, more recent crutch signals the further collapse we inhabit.
Jesse Darling: ‘The Contractor,’ 2025, installation view at Galerie Molitor // Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Molitor, photo by Marjorie Brunet Plaza
Signs of ruin exist elsewhere in the exhibition, too. In ‘Der Ordoliberalismus (School),’ Darling co-opts an exhibition plinth, installing windows in its sides and a model building entrance on top. A wired-in motor chugs away, lifting and releasing a small piece of wood that clacks endlessly in the rhythm of a production line. It gets me thinking about how art schools, in the UK at least, have become big-money businesses, training students for capitalist “success” as much as for finding their own artistic voice. Another motor inside the model is meant to raise a metal leaf ornament, but a bent screw throws the mechanism off. The leaf jerks upward only partway, faltering. Like the vitrine before, the objects of display, of presenting art, are coming undone.
Jesse Darling: ‘The Contractor,’ 2025, installation view at Galerie Molitor // Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Molitor, photo by Marjorie Brunet Plaza
Other architectures stand in ruin. Presenting paintings for the first time in this exhibition, Darling prods at the faltering structures of family and home. In ‘Auf die Zukunft! III’ (“Here’s to the future!”), two grown-ups raise long sticks, a red glove propped at the top like a flag, reaching towards hazy rows of colourful but uniform houses. A kid stands beside them, clutching what looks like a deflated, house-shaped balloon. The adult holding the kid’s hand looks frail and concerned, with big, hollowed-out eyes. The other wears a mask, its neutral expression painted on. Also strapped onto their body is a detachable pregnant belly, queering the institution of the family; and yet, the figures are strained. A scene that might point towards hopefulness is sagging instead. What kind of “future” is this, and what does it mean to inherit it?
Jesse Darling: ‘The Contractor,’ 2025, installation view at Galerie Molitor // Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Molitor, photo by Marjorie Brunet Plaza
Grasping for an alternative reality, ‘Ich stehe im Wald’ (“I stand in the forest”) is tucked up on the mezzanine floor of the gallery, away from the rest of the works. The painting exists in some half-familiar folklore, depicting a faun with strange robotic appendages, reaching out to a human tree figure, gnarled roots planted like spindly high heels in the ground, branches and leaves bearing astrological maps. The faun’s beard is licked with fire. Instead of rows of the house motif from the previous painting, simple tree symbols ground the piece instead. I think of the “forbidden longing for what is wild and unrestrained” the exhibition’s press release talks about. The forest is naturally with this sort of strangeness, away from the human drive for order and knowability.
Jesse Darling: ‘The Contractor,’ 2025, installation view at Galerie Molitor // Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Molitor, photo by Marjorie Brunet Plaza
Across ‘The Contractor,’ Darling’s subjects insist on their weirdness, a queering of purpose that exposes the strain of being systematized. The weird isn’t put out there as a breakdown, but a way of being true and getting by, a form of persistence that creates distance from difficult conditions without denying them. The tallies are chaotic, and still counting up. The family is pulling together and reaching for grounding, even if things seem uncertain. The jackhammer cane rejects its original purpose and protests instead. Darling shows us what happens when order unravels: the emergence of something else, something unstable, weird and alive.
Exhibition Info
Galerie Molitor
Jesse Darling: ‘The Contractor’
Exhibition: Sept. 12–Nov. 8, 2025
galeriemolitor.com
Kurfürstenstraße 143, 10785 Berlin, click here for map
