Jacob Kassay Flags

Jacob Kassay, Untitled, 2007, vinyl on paper, 13 3/4 x 11 in., on view at Von Ammon in DC Focus Group 5, a new group show at Von Ammon in Washington includes works of the moment, some of which are also throwbacks. There are works by six artists: Liz Craft, Catharine Czudej, Ignacio Gatica, Tony Matelli, and Banks Violette, and three early works on paper by Jacob Kassay. These small compositions are vinyl stickers of the US flag in various mirrored configurations. They remind me of the incredible little stack of flags on plastic that Jasper Johns loaned to the recent show of flag works at Craig Starr. Like Johns, Kassay was working with the flag as an image and an object for several years before he got massive art world attention. Unlike Johns’s, Kassay’s flags have been much less widely seen. Though it’s been lost in a hall of silvered mirrors since, when Kassay popped in 2009, a flag-related installation was like his only Google image. That massive textile work, draped like an…