Matthew Day Jackson (American, b. 1974), Unicursal Labyrinth, 2014. Oil on panel, stainless steel frame.jp
(From Wikipedia)
Matthew Day Jackson (born 1974)
is an American artist whose multifaceted practice encompasses sculpture,
painting, collage, photography, drawing, video, performance and installation.
Since graduating with an MFA from
Rutgers University in 2001, following his BFA from the University of Washington
in Seattle, he has had numerous solo exhibitions. His work has been shown at
MAMbo Museo d'Arte Moderna in Bologna, Italy; Boulder Museum of Contemporary
Art in Boulder, Colorado; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA; the Portland
Museum of Art Biennial in Portland, Maine; and the Whitney Biennial Day for
Night in New York.
Jackson’s works utilize a familiar
iconography - images such as the geodesic structures of Buckminster Fuller,
mankind’s first steps on the moon, and the covers of Life magazine from the
1960s and 1970s - and references from art history. Materials he employs have
included scorched wood, molten lead, mother-of-pearl, precious metals, formica,
and found objects such as worn T-shirts, prosthetic limbs, axe handles and
posters.
The critic Jeffrey Kastner has
noted that his works locate ‘startling beauty in their counterintuitive
material juxtapositions.’
However, for Jackson beauty is
frequently partnered by desolation. His work explores a concept that he terms
‘the Horriful’, the belief that everything one does has the potential to bring
both beauty and horror.
In one such work, titled Little
Bouquet in Clay Jar (2018), the artist incorporates an aerial view of the
Trinity test site, explaining that 'the job of the apocalypse or the reckoning
is the job of a god or deity, but in the 20th century, it became a human
possibility.’
Matthew Day Jackson is
represented by Hauser & Wirth and Grimm Gallery in Amsterdam.