Richard Jackson: The Three Bears

HASWELLEDIGER & CO. GALLERY and FOUNDATION 20 21 are pleased to present two concurrent exhibitions by the California-based artist Richard Jackson.

Richard Jackson's work has long been characterized by the pursuit of novel ways to mark the passage of time. From his early wall paintings, in which paint-covered canvases were nailed face-to-wall and then spun, to his psychologically taut Big Time Idea (1987-92), a room comprised of 1,000 clocks handmade by the artist over a period of five years, Jackson has consistently used his mistrust of conventional painting as a gateway to works that straddle the divide between the explicitly civilized and the wildly primordial. Recent years have found the artist veering away from his past and often epic battles with the canvas (in 1979 Jackson built a giant globe of 6,000 stacked, painted canvases at the LA County Museum) to a preoccupation with consolidating his various passions, both creative and private. Newer works, such as Trophy Room (2002) and Bedroom (2002), two self-enclosed tableaux that insinuate domestic scenarios of personal conquest and violence, ultimately contribute to their own paradoxical destruction/creation through a performative application of paint.

At Haswellediger & Co. Gallery, Jackson presents Dick's Pictures, an exhibition in which the domestic motif first suggested in Trophy Room and Bedroom continues with the large-scale, self-spinning structure Living Room (2004). This voyeuristic glimpse into a traditional den, outfitted with a small sofa, coffee table, and reading lamp, finds itself quickly transformed from ultra-generic to abject Americana through the artist's private painting performance.

Likewise, Dick's Deer (2004), a grossly modified, paint-spewing, life-size hunting deer decoy, further illustrates Jackson's preoccupation with his art's relationship to man, machine, and nature, and finds its unique form in paint's inherent formlessness.

For Foundation 20 21, Jackson presents The Three Bears, a site-specific work consisting of three life-size bear decoys. As with Dick's Deer, the decoys have been drastically altered to accommodate a paint-spewing mechanism. Activated pre-opening to shoot paint at one another, The Three Bears leave behind their "marked" territory for the viewer to witness.

Richard Jackson was born in 1939. Past exhibitions include: Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990's, 1992 (LA MoCA)(cur. Paul Schimmel); 4th Biennale d'Art Contemporain de Lyon LAutre,1997; Venice Biennale dAPERTutto (cur. Harald Szeemann),1999; BAWAG Foundation (Vienna)(Retrospective), 2002; Sammlung Hauser & Wirth, House of Fiction, 2002. Forthcoming exhibitions include: Centre Pompidou, 2005; Galerie Hauser & Wirth (London), 2005 (solo).

Pressetext

Richard Jackson
The Three Bears