Jack Pierson
20 Oct - 19 Nov 2005
Jack Pierson
20 October - 19 November
Private View: Wednesday 19 October, 6 - 8 pm
“Jack Pierson has fashioned an autobiography from a collection of images of unidentified men. While there is a canny intimacy to these images, languorously attuned to the temporal glamour of ordinary moments, the subject of this ‘Self Portrait’ series is desire – when it begins, how long it lasts, what it tells us about ourselves, not least about the artist.”
Philip Gefter, ‘Self-Portrait as Obscure Object of Desire’, The New York Times, 18 Dec, 2003.
Alison Jacques Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by renowned American artist Jack Pierson. The exhibition will consist of new pigment print photographs from the ‘Self Portrait’ series specially commissioned for London. Earlier images from this series were premiered at the ‘Whitney Biennial’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2004 and achieved widespread critical acclaim.
Through various means from installation to drawing, Jack Pierson has for many years been exploring the inter-related notions of love, desire, sex, loss and glamour and its sometimes seedy undersides. There is something highly personal inherent in much of Pierson’s work—whether it be an assumed insight into the intimate life of the artist, or the work itself seeking to question the intimate thoughts and desires of the viewer. The ‘Self Portrait’ series is no exception, none of these works are in fact of the artist; rather, these are metaphorical self-portraits. As Gefter writes in his New York Times article “No matter how strong our own sense of who we are, the lust for some idealized version of ourselves is invariably summoned in the barrage of images endlessly flashing before us. Jack Pierson’s ‘Self Portrait’ series attests to this, underscoring at its core his own erotic impulse to be as desirable as those he desires, to become the very object of his own attraction.”
Self Portrait #28 represents youth, an “Adam” like adolescent stands on a pedestal in a photographic studio suggesting the idea of creation or rebirth. Self Portrait #25 confronts us with a martyr in the form of a man with a knife-scarred torso suggesting enduring pain, torture and struggle. Self Portrait #29 focuses on the idea of wisdom in the form of an older man and yet despite his years, his face is filled with possibility. Self Portrait #24 presents a young man sitting casually with his tuxedo jacket open, a self-portrait of the artist in repose, perhaps greeting the dawn, the morning after a well spent youth. These are highly charged colour images which ask us to explore not just the artist’s narratives of identity, but also our own identities, as varied and changeable as they can be.
In the upstairs gallery, there will be a suite of drawings entitled Melancholia Passing into Madness. The twelve drawings are of a single female subject completed by the artist in two sessions.
Jack Pierson was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts (1960). In addition to ‘Regrets’, a solo retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2002); recent museum shows include ‘Electric Dreams’, The Barbican, London (2002); the ‘Whitney Biennial’, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004); and a solo show of early works from the ‘Self Portrait’ series at Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2004). This is Pierson’s second solo show with Alison Jacques in London.
20 October - 19 November
Private View: Wednesday 19 October, 6 - 8 pm
“Jack Pierson has fashioned an autobiography from a collection of images of unidentified men. While there is a canny intimacy to these images, languorously attuned to the temporal glamour of ordinary moments, the subject of this ‘Self Portrait’ series is desire – when it begins, how long it lasts, what it tells us about ourselves, not least about the artist.”
Philip Gefter, ‘Self-Portrait as Obscure Object of Desire’, The New York Times, 18 Dec, 2003.
Alison Jacques Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by renowned American artist Jack Pierson. The exhibition will consist of new pigment print photographs from the ‘Self Portrait’ series specially commissioned for London. Earlier images from this series were premiered at the ‘Whitney Biennial’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2004 and achieved widespread critical acclaim.
Through various means from installation to drawing, Jack Pierson has for many years been exploring the inter-related notions of love, desire, sex, loss and glamour and its sometimes seedy undersides. There is something highly personal inherent in much of Pierson’s work—whether it be an assumed insight into the intimate life of the artist, or the work itself seeking to question the intimate thoughts and desires of the viewer. The ‘Self Portrait’ series is no exception, none of these works are in fact of the artist; rather, these are metaphorical self-portraits. As Gefter writes in his New York Times article “No matter how strong our own sense of who we are, the lust for some idealized version of ourselves is invariably summoned in the barrage of images endlessly flashing before us. Jack Pierson’s ‘Self Portrait’ series attests to this, underscoring at its core his own erotic impulse to be as desirable as those he desires, to become the very object of his own attraction.”
Self Portrait #28 represents youth, an “Adam” like adolescent stands on a pedestal in a photographic studio suggesting the idea of creation or rebirth. Self Portrait #25 confronts us with a martyr in the form of a man with a knife-scarred torso suggesting enduring pain, torture and struggle. Self Portrait #29 focuses on the idea of wisdom in the form of an older man and yet despite his years, his face is filled with possibility. Self Portrait #24 presents a young man sitting casually with his tuxedo jacket open, a self-portrait of the artist in repose, perhaps greeting the dawn, the morning after a well spent youth. These are highly charged colour images which ask us to explore not just the artist’s narratives of identity, but also our own identities, as varied and changeable as they can be.
In the upstairs gallery, there will be a suite of drawings entitled Melancholia Passing into Madness. The twelve drawings are of a single female subject completed by the artist in two sessions.
Jack Pierson was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts (1960). In addition to ‘Regrets’, a solo retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2002); recent museum shows include ‘Electric Dreams’, The Barbican, London (2002); the ‘Whitney Biennial’, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004); and a solo show of early works from the ‘Self Portrait’ series at Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2004). This is Pierson’s second solo show with Alison Jacques in London.