zach lieberman

INTERVIEW WITH COLLECTOR Taste Is Work - Kate Vass in Conversation with Josh Yakov, aka Jiggy @delta_alpha_ohm “We sometimes use ‘it’s subjective’ as a way of avoiding the harder work of making distinctions.” - Jiggy @delta_alpha_ohm At a moment when algorithms, markets and social networks constantly tell us what deserves our attention, how is taste actually formed? And can it still be our own? For Josh Yakov, taste is something practiced rather than possessed. It sits somewhere between the personal and the objective. As in the kitchen, you can oversalt something or burn it, and learning to tell the difference takes a trained palate, attention and a willingness to say why something works. In this conversation, Yakov reflects on his path from finance and cooking to collecting generative art. He talks about the grassroots communities of Hic et Nunc and fx(hash) that pulled him beyond established consensus, studio visits as the collector’s equivalent of a site visit, and the ideas of Ruby Justice Thelot @being_on_line and Georges Bataille on how taste is built. We also talk about criticism as a form of care, what is lost when a work’s price falls to zero, and why collectors carry a responsibility, but not the authority, to decide what becomes history. Taste takes curiosity, research and the patience to look before everyone else agrees it matters. 👇🧵 Cover: Zach Lieberman @zachlieberman, Color ribbon study, 2022