Patrick Jackson PATRICK JACKSON

Ghebaly Gallery Patrick Jackson PATRICK JACKSON

1978 Born in Los Angeles Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

EDUCATION

2007 MFA, University of Southern California, Roski School of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA 2004 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME 2002 BFA, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2016 (UPCOMING) My Dark Architect, Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (UPCOMING) Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, CA 2015 Shelving Unit, Galerie Vallois; Paris, FR Extreme Mystic Fire, Hakuna Matata, Los Angeles, CA 2013 The Third Floor, Francois Ghebaly Gallery; Los Angeles, CA 2012 All Cut Up, 1451 E. 4th St. (in collaboration with Francois Ghebaly); Los Angeles, CA The Armory Show, with François Ghebaly and Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, NY 2011 House of Double, 600 Robinson St. Apt #1 and #4 (in collaboration with Francois Ghebaly Gallery); Los Angeles, CA Frame at the Frieze Art Fair, (François Ghebaly Gallery), London, UK 2010 Tchotchke Stacks, Nicole Klagsbrun; New York, NY 2009 NADA Projects, (François Ghebaly Gallery), Miami Beach, FL 2008 City Unborn, Francois Ghebaly Gallery; Los Angeles, CA 2007 Nomad of the Steppers Florescent Light and Hot Water, Roski Gallery; Los Angeles, CA

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2016 Mud of Murk, Patrick Jackson and Asha Schechter, 3A Gallery, New York, NY 2015 ‘Tchotchke’: Mass-Produced Sentimental Objects in Contemporary Art, Gund Gallery at Kenyon College; Gambier, OH West Coast, Galerie Lefebvre & Fils, Paris, FR 3 Days of the Condor, 3 Days Awake, Los Angeles, CA 2014 Control Lapse, Josh Lilley Gallery, London, UK The Tool and Its Reversal, Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre; Alberta, CAN The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of, Clearing Gallery; Brooklyn, NY 2013 Made in Space, Gavin Brown Enterprises and Venus Over Manhattan; Los Angeles, CA The Humors, Perry Rubenstein Gallery; Los Angeles, CA Made in Space, Night Gallery; Los Angeles, CA 2012 Vision Quest, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery; New York, NY Material Underground, Francois Ghebaly Gallery; Los Angeles, CA Group Show, Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA nd Greater L.A., 483 Broadway 2 floor, curated by Benjamin Godsill, Eleanor Cayre and Joel Mesler; New York, NY 2010 BigMinis: Fetishes of Crisis, CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain; Bordeaux, FR Musée Los Angeles, 1451 E. 4thSt., curated by Mieke Marple; Los Angeles, CA California Dreamin’, Portugal Arte 10, curated by Fred Hoffmann; Lisbon, POR 90012, Kate Werble Gallery; New York, NY 2009 Second Nature: The Valentine-Adelson Collection, Hammer Museum; Los Angeles, CA Summer Reading, curated by Mike Bouchet, Invisible Exports; New York, NY 2008 Yesterday & Tomorrow, High Desert Test Sites, California Biennial; Joshua Tree, CA 2006 LA Weekly's Annual, Track 16; Los Angeles, CA Quiver, Cirrus Gallery; Los Angeles, CA 2003 Cosmorama, Eastern Connecticut State University; Willimantic, CT 2002 Supernatural Satisfaction, The Soap Factory; Minneapolis, MN 2001 Shadow Boxes, Exploratorium; San Francisco, CA

AWARDS

2014 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant 2006 Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Beverly G. Alpay Award 2003 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Studio Residency; New York, NY 2002 Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Studio Residency; New York, NY

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

2014 Mousse Magazine, March 2014; Andrew Berardini, Three Levels Art Forum, February 2014; Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, The Third Floor Review 2013 Los Angeles Times, December 2013; Sharon Mizota, The Third Floor Review New York Times, 8/1/13; Roberta Smith, Made in Space Review Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life Tradition, by Michael Petry, Thames & Hudson 2011 New York Times, 6/1/11; Roberta Smith, Bit of Hollywood, Minus the Tinsel, Greater LA 2010 BigMinis: Fetishes of Crisis Catalogue, Tchotchke Stacks, p.269, CAPC, Sternberg Press Modern Painters December 2010/January 2011; Charlie Schultz, The Collectors Art Forum, December 2010; Emily Hall, Tchotchke Stacks Review 2008 Artforum.com, May 2008; Sharon Mizota “City Unborn” Critic’s Picks 2006 LA WEEKLY, September 6, VOL.28, NO.42; Tom Christie and Holly Myers “Afterschool Art”

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Installation view, Patrick Jackson, Shelving Unit, 2015 Galerie Lefebvre & Fils, Paris SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Installation view, The Stuf That Dreams Are Made Of, 2014 (Group Exhibition) C L E A R I N G, New York SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Installation view, Made in Space, 2013 (Group Exhibition) Gavin Brown enterprise, New York SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Installation view, Patrick Jackson, Josh Lilley, London, 2015 SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Installation view, Patrick Jackson, The Third Floor, 2013 Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Installation view, Patrick Jackson, All Cut Up, 2012 1451 E. 4th St. (in collaboration with Ghebaly Gallery), Los Angeles, CA SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Installation view, Patrick Jackson, House of Double, 2011 600 Robinson St. Apt #1 and #4 (in collaboration with Ghebaly Gallery), Los Angeles, CA SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Installation view, Patrick Jackson, Tchotchke Stacks, 2010 Nicole Klagsbrun, New York SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Installation view, Patrick Jackson, City Unborn, 2009 Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Installation view, Patrick Jackson, Nomad of the Steppers Florescent Light and Hot Water, 2007 Roski Gallery, Los Angeles SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Installation view, Patrick Jackson, Nomad of the Steppers Florescent Light and Hot Water, 2007 Roski Gallery, Los Angeles SELECTED WORKS

Patrick Jackson Untitled Ceramics 2016 plasticine, polyurethane, plaster, epoxy, ceramic 9.5 x 12.5 x 2 inches SELECTED WORKS

Patrick Jackson Hands Holding 2016 plasticine, polyurethane, epoxy 34 x 26 x 5 inches SELECTED WORKS

Patrick Jackson Untitled Drawing 2016 Ink on paper 9 x 12 inches SELECTED WORKS

Patrick Jackson Alphabet Skin 2015 ceramic 10 x 8 x 1.5 inches SELECTED WORKS

Patrick Jackson Folding Torus 2015 epoxy, paint 25 x 25 x 8 inches Edition of 3 SELECTED WORKS

Patrick Jackson Silhouette 2015 ceramic 10 x 6 x 2 inches SELECTED WORKS

Patrick Jackson Rainbow Rock Dino Skin 2015 Ceramic and glaze 14 x 8 x 13 inches SELECTED WORKS

Patrick Jackson Curtains 2013 ceramic, glaze, hardware 12 x 20 x 2 inches SELECTED WORKS

Patrick Jackson Cups at Hand and Brick Wall Signs 2011 powder-coated metal, wax, ceramic and glass cups, wood pedestal 98.5 x 18 x 9.5 inches SELECTED WORKS

Patrick Jackson Dirt Pile on a Table (Victorian) 2011 dirt, table, epoxy 16 x 34 x 12 inches SELECTED WORKS

Patrick Jackson Tchotchke Stack 22 2010 tchotchkes, glass, mirrors, wood, coins Dimensions variable mousse 42 ~ Patrick Jackson los angeles ~ Patrick Jackson

Bodies and objects, time and possibilities. size, the glass uniting them into sculptures. Haim Steinbach’s shelved displays LOS ANGELES make an easy reference, though Jackson doesn’t do it to uncover the hidden According to some, between the nothing of a single point and the infnity of all meanings of the objects, but to erase them. Displayed so, they can’t help but possibilities for all times there are merely ten lines, up to the tenth dimension. appear as purely commercial, contained and clean and likely for sale. All those We cannot conceive of that which lies beyond, so we’re stuck at ten. Of course things and all that glass. The French don’t call it lèche-vitrine for nothing. there are other theories, too. By removing all meaning but their size and structural durability, Jackson runs THREE LEVELS For sculpture, we have three. One working defnition of sculpture is art in the risk of sucking away the one thing tchotchkes had going for them: that they three dimensions. A thing in space. Plunked on a plinth, craned onto a plaza, were loved by people. As much as I don’t care for tchotchkes, I care for others. mantled over your freplace, we can saunter around it, maybe even pick it up, a BY ANDREW BERARDINI My mother keeps tchotchkes. The boundary between the person and her things thing intended to be viewed as such. Sculpture is our body next to its body. Our is blurry. I would as soon mock one of them to her as I would her. humanness next to its thingness. Artworks are efgies, made by us, stand-ins for humans more mortally fragile than their creations. Accompanying their inaugural display however, Jackson made a poster that quietly revealed and redeemed. Above the announcement of the artist, the gal- What dimension contains the animating spirit, the past history that formed it lery, the fair, two cartoon characters from the Simpsons stand side by side: and the potential futures and desires that compel it forward, the needs that the thick, ponytailed comic-book dealer and the insidious oligarch Mr. Burns. make it a thing, the complex interactions that make it a self? Perhaps it’s all in Each has a long, well-written speech talk-bubbled above. The comics dealer the tenth, and maybe so are we. states that these tchotchke stacks make “an exceptional prop for a contempo- Form and concept have never been indissoluble. Bodies are things, things that rary Dario Argento flm, used to frst foreshadow, and ultimately to execute, are us. So is art. the untimely and gruesome death of a beautiful young thrift store clerk.” Mr. Burns replies, “Cats, dogs, various forms of hugs and other signs of love—the Here with Patrick Jackson, we have things. Lowbrow tchotchkes and high- perfect decorations for some drone’s cubicle. Dust collecting representations of concept installations, mysterious bodies and hollow mannequins, heaps of mud hopes and dreams won’t fll in for anything their hollow lives lack. However, and collections of mugs. And we have bodies. His and ours. All displayed just so. the one tchotchke titled ‘bundle of joy’ is rather endearing.”

I half-hate tchotchkes, the lowliest of sculptures. Those small decorative objects displayed, piled, arranged around certain houses. That half-hate oozes from the love I have for the things they appear to feebly mimic: icons and rel- ics, efgies and totems, things handcrafted and carefully wrought. Objects can hold memory, inscribed or exalted with a self, a family, a civilization, his- tories, dreams, but tchotchkes seem like a fimsy approximation of the same: cheap and disposable, carelessly made, easily acquired, and superfcially ad- mired. Sad-faced clowns and weeping Virgins, abstracted Southwestern coy- otes and smirky Texas cowboys, weepy kittens with glossed oversized eyes and white-winged angels with shit-eating grins, a busted John F. Kennedy and Michelangelo’s David in every size, shape and color, they are invented to collect dust on doilies, to clutter and oppress, built to be broken, tossed.

Mostly it is not hate, really, but apathy. There is a dollop of sympathy too. Tchotchkes divulge a few of the tawdrier secrets about us, our families, our civilizations, though the stories they tell aren’t all bad. One defensible aspect of their weakish aura is the democratization of art objects, of sculpture. Many people have something decorating their walls, an Ansel Adams print or a knock-of of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper clustered into the framed photographs of Olan Mills staged family portraits and frst day of school snapshots, so why can’t things act similarly, with the same inofensive ornamental intent? Both tchotchkes and poster art are readily found at your local Salvation Army. For some the anodyne is worse than the ofensive. I would rather ofend.

Mike Kelley thriftstored the core of one of his most beloved sculptures More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid, (1987), a tapestry of hand-woven toys and afghans, a morass from a thousand grandmas for a thousand grandchil- dren ash-canned into the bins of the second-hand shop and recovered forever here as evidence by Kelley. Working-class people give gifts and relate and love through the making of objects, while rich folks just buy things. Kelley has often handled tchotchkes too, as the outcropping of a distinctly American psychic “City Unborn”, François Ghebaly Gallery (formerly Chung King terrain, of a sentiment standing in for so much else. Though unlike the afghans Project), Los Angeles, 2008. Courtesy: the artist and François Ghebaly, Los Angeles and sock-monkeys, the tchotchkes are mass-produced. So many objects, so cheaply produced, make all objects feel somehow a little more meaningless, all Patrick Jackson’s works are crowded with things. They are throngs of objects human emotion a little less, to some nefarious purpose, no doubt. They are props, objects meant to be employed in a fction, things to be animat- painstakingly arranged, gutted of their (albeit feeble) emotional appeal, Houses cluttered with cheap knickknacks are fimsy bulwarks for their own- ed only by actions. Also, despite their cheapness, they can still be endearing. exploited as parts of a more encompassing endeavor. Hence the innumerable ers. So many things made with so little love can’t help but fail to hold back the statuettes sustaining panes of glass to form elegant inﬁnite pillars; hundreds of meaninglessness that threatens to tsunami us all. It might be better if their own- On a leafy Los Angeles street, a door opens to blood red shag carpet, an low-cost Atlases, upon closer inspection. Or the many types of breakfast mugs, ers’ afections were instead bestowed upon living creatures, rather than these apartment emptied of the normal accoutrements of living. On the left, in the statues made to look like them, cartoonish people and generic animals, these kitchen stripped of appliances, countertops naked, two charcoal gray blankets encrusted and installed amidst the scaﬀolding of a basement crawlspace visitors hollow ceramic things. lie stacked with mostly useful things, one jumbled and the other carefully ar- can enter; or the rebus objects at the scene of the presumed homicide/suicide rayed, both placed just so on the linoleum tile patterned to look like parquet. of two identical twins. Andrew Berardini has reverently pondered all the artist’s Patrick Jackson employs these petty statues beloved by housefraus and sen- A hammer, a cane, a broom. A knife, a wrench, a baseball bat. Over in the timental sirs as pillars between perfectly stacked sheets of glass for his own living room, bare walls frame nine diferent cofee tables piled with mounds of settings in search of meaning, capturing murmurs on the verge of an eternally endless columns. He Brancusied a handful of glass sheets in an earlier instal- dirt, fsts of mud like piles of dinosaur shit. In the two bedrooms beyond are postponed confession. lation, A City Unborn (2008), odd items resting on glass surfaces alongside the two bodies. Identically clad in denim jumpsuits, faces shrouded in long black Romanian’s iconic and theoretically interminable repeating shapes. For these beards and hair, hands folded, feet unshod and lined with veins, eyes closed. columns, all other merits or considerations have been emptied out of his trin- A funereal repose, twin bikers lying in state, neither fully seen simultaneously. kets; they are as purely new and totally modern as those interlocking diamonds The corpses difer in that one wears red latex gloves and the other black. You “Tchotchke Stacks” installation view at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, 2010. Courtesy: the artist and Nicole Klagsbrun, New York of the Endless Column (1935-38). They are judged purely by their strength and may not know their face, but I do. It’s Patrick Jackson. 204 205 mousse 42 ~ Patrick Jackson los angeles ~ Patrick Jackson

Black Statue, 2013, “The Third Floor” installation view at “The Third Floor” installation view at François François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, 2013. Courtesy: the artist Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, 2013. Courtesy: the and François Ghebaly, Los Angeles artist and François Ghebaly, Los Angeles 206 207 mousse 42 ~ Patrick Jackson los angeles ~ Patrick Jackson

Dirt Piles on Tables, 2011, “House of Double” installation view at François Ghebaly Gallery, 2011. Courtesy: the artist and François Ghebaly, Los Angeles

At the opening people sip cold beer and wander in and out of the apartment, Outside and up another staircase, a third room overlooks the frst two. A fgure making idle chatter amidst this strange tableau, cycling in and out, unable to is clothed in black, with black hair, barefoot with matte black skin, hollowed unriddle the scene. I try to imagine that this isn’t an art show, but a door I eyes. He (it?) stands away from the stairwell, related to it and the scene be- stumbled upon, open. What circumstance might make such a series of objects low, but not positioned so as to be eyelessly looking down. Mannequins always possible? A murder maybe? What is murder but an action that metamorphoses shiver and creep out of context, misproportioned (see: Charles Ray), too much a person into a thing? Dead bodies are merely things anyway, once they’ve like bodies without being them. This one, an efgy of a child, with odd hands been emptied of life, of the spirit that makes a person. Skulls sometimes are and feet, is even more unnerving. It takes me a few diferent visits to take in just tchotchkes on morbid collectors desks, skeletons dangling in biology class- each thing, to notice the odd proportions of the boy mannequin, to register rooms are teaching tools, no longer persons. Finger the fesh and you know it’s all the substances and surfaces of these ceramics, to return again and again to just latex, but that does not make it any more explicable. plumb whatever story is revealed. Nothing so literal as a plot is forthcoming. A singularity, a doubling, a triple. Three levels. Nothing explained. Menace still hovers over this scene, even as an art show; some serene madness carefully arranged these things. The apartment emptied but arranged like a Modernism endeavored to make it new, a revolution of image and idea, of form tomb, mysteriously made atop a carpet like an ocean of blood. A set for a movie and object. The suggestion of Brancusi’s Endless Column (1935-38) is that it never shot whose story will always elude us. and the revolution it represents can go on forever in either direction, even if it doesn’t. The part that we see is only a moment, caught in the middle of infnity. Cinematic nearly wears into cliché these days, but it can mean a setting plump with an unknown story that we yearn to be told. Brancusi’s monument at Târgu Jiu was meant to symbolize the infnite sacrifce of Romanian soldiers, those men who in defense of their home turned their We are not always gratifed in that desire. bodies into things, embracing their own infnity.

Across town, a couple of years later, a building that surely houses an art gal- Objects and bodies, relating to each other, mocking each other. lery: anonymous looking objects hang on the wall, aspirational two-dimen- sional vaguely minimalist, each a prop: windows, curtains, and blinds. The trio Both the apartment and the three-leveled gallery, carpeted and displayed, are hangs above a perfectly manicured white carpet. But there, a staircase has been installations by Jackson. They are collections of things, framed resolutely just cut into the snowy white foor, leading below. Dyed a smeary and patchy black, so, not explained at all, yet they seem to quietly seethe with danger. The story the stairs lead down into a basement crawlspace. A complex erector set of metal that can never plot itself out, that is always a suggestion but never seeming- scafolding supports the foor above, and clusters of oversized ceramic milk ly enacted, is a story of things and people, bodies and objects, never easily bottles, wine jugs, and cofee mugs are tucked around it. Most bear a smooth summed up and always elusively teased. Even the humble tchotchke can stand coating of burnt cork black, but the oversized mugs vary wildly in color and in for the dream of the permanent revolution. texture, their surfaces glazed in odd ways; some foam with diseased pustules, others repeat spermy patterns, the colors unreal, chemical, strange. Tchotchkes The sculpture here is more than just a thing in space, its time like a clock that maybe, but too weird to ever grace a granny’s breakfast nook. You can crawl ticks but never moves forward; it is the possibility of what might happen, and it through the support bars and peer into the mugs. At the bottom of each lies a hangs there, pendulous, pregnant, but never realized. diferent substance, a diferent story: resinous clumps and black fngers covered in fies, epoxies and crystals and plastic ice cubes foating in congealed liquids, Press Release of “City Unborn”, François Ghebaly Gallery (formerly Chung King milky and translucent, white and red. Project), Los Angeles, 2008. Courtesy: the artist and François Ghebaly, Los Angeles 208 209 THREE LEVELS che fallire nel compito di ostacolare l’assenza di sen- neri. Forse voi non conoscete il loro volto, ma io sì. la rivoluzione che incarna possa proseguire per so che minaccia di spazzarci via tutti. Sarebbe me- Si tratta di quello di Patrick Jackson. di Andrew Berardini sempre, in entrambe le direzioni, anche se in realtà glio se i sentimenti dei loro proprietari fossero river- non è ciò che accade. La parte che vediamo è solo sati su delle creature viventi anziché su delle statue All’inaugurazione le persone sorseggiano birra un momento, catturato nel mezzo dell’infinità. fatte per somigliare a quelle creature: persone simili ghiacciata e vagano per l’appartamento, chiacchie- a personaggi di un fumetto e animali generici, vuoti rando del più e del meno nel bel mezzo di questo Il monumento di Brancusi a Târgu Jiu è stato pensa- oggetti di ceramica. curioso tableau, entrando e uscendo ciclicamente, to per simboleggiare il sacrificio infinito dei soldati incapaci di decifrare la scena. Provo a immaginare romeni, quegli uomini che, per difendere la loro pa- Patrick Jackson utilizza queste insignificanti sta- di non trovarmi a una mostra, ma di essermi imbat- tria, hanno trasformato i loro corpi in cose, abbrac- tuette, così amate dalle casalinghe stile anni Cin- tuto in una porta aperta ed essere entrato. Che cir- ciando la propria infinità. quanta e dai signori sentimentali, come pilastri di costanza potrebbe aver reso possibile la presenza di sostegno per le lastre di vetro perfettamente so- una simile serie di oggetti? Un omicidio forse? Che Oggetti e corpi, che si pongono in relazione gli uni vrapposte che formano le sue immense colonne. cos’è l’omicidio se non un’azione che tramuta una con gli altri, che si fanno beffe gli uni degli altri. Jackson aveva già “brancusizzato” alcune lastre persona in una cosa? I corpi morti sono semplice- di vetro in una precedente installazione, A City mente delle cose, dopotutto, una volta che sono sta- Sia l’appartamento sia la galleria su tre piani, rico- Unborn (2008), in cui strani oggetti erano posati ti svuotati della vita, dello spirito che fa una persona. perti di moquette e messi in mostra, sono installa- su superfici di vetro accanto alle forme iconiche e I teschi, a volte, sono solo dei ninnoli sulle scrivanie zioni di Jackson. Sono raccolte di cose, semplice- teoricamente ripetute all’infinito dell’artista rume- di collezionisti morbosi, mentre gli scheletri appesi mente incorniciate, senza alcuna spiegazione. Eppu- no. Per formare queste colonne, i ninnoli vengono nei laboratori di biologia sono solamente strumenti re, nella loro quieta compostezza, sembrano ema- svuotati di qualsiasi valore e considerazione ulte- di insegnamento e non più persone. Tastate la car- nare un’aura di pericolo. La storia che non può mai riore; sono qualcosa di assolutamente nuovo e di ne e scoprirete che si tratta solamente di lattice, ma svolgersi, che rimane sempre un suggerimento ma totalmente moderno, proprio come i diamanti in- questo non rende la cosa più spiegabile. che non è mai messa in atto, è una storia di cose e di trecciati di Colonna Infinita (1935-38). Essi sono va- persone, di corpi e di oggetti, che non può mai esse- lutati esclusivamente in base della loro resistenza Un senso di minaccia continua ad aleggiare sulla re riassunta con facilità e che è sempre accennata in e alla loro dimensione, mentre il vetro funge da ele- scena, anche se si tratta di una mostra d’arte; una modo sfuggente. Anche l’umile ninnolo può simbo- mento di collegamento che li trasforma in sculture. sorta di quieta pazzia sembra essere alla base della leggiare il sogno della rivoluzione permanente. Gli oggetti esposti su mensole di Haim Steinbach disposizione di queste cose. L’appartamento è svuo- potrebbero costituire un facile riferimento, tutta- tato, organizzato come una tomba, misteriosamente Qui la scultura è più di una cosa nello spazio, il suo via Jackson non si propone di scoprire i significati edificata sopra una moquette simile a un oceano di tempo è quello di un orologio che ticchetta senza nascosti di questi oggetti, ma di cancellarli. Così sangue. La scenografia di un film mai girato, la cui che le lancette si spostino; è la possibilità latente, esposti non possono che apparire puramente com- storia ci sfuggirà sempre. appesa lì, pendula, gravida, ma mai realizzata. merciali, sobri, puliti e con ogni probabilità destina- ti alla vendita. Tutte quelle cose e tutto quel vetro. Ciò che è cinematografico scivola quasi nel cliché Non per niente i francesi parlano di lèche-vitrine. ai giorni nostri, ma può voler dire anche trovarsi in presenza di uno scenario che racchiude in sé una Privando completamente gli oggetti del loro signifi- storia che desideriamo venga raccontata. cato e mantenendone solo la dimensione e la resistenza strutturale, Jackson corre il rischio di svuo- Non sempre, però, quel desiderio viene soddisfatto. tare tali ninnoli dell’unica caratteristica positiva che possedevano: il fatto di essere amati dalle persone. Dall’altra parte della città, un paio d’anni fa, in un Per quanto non mi importi nulla dei ninnoli, mi im- edificio che sicuramente ospita una galleria d’arte, porta delle altre persone. Mia madre possiede nin- degli oggetti anonimi, aspiranti alla bidimensiona- noli come quelli. Il confine tra una persona e le sue lità, e vagamente minimalisti dall’aspetto anonimo cose è sfumato. Non mi permetterei mai di prendere pendono dalla parete. Ognuno di essi è un oggetto in giro uno di quegli oggetti di fronte a lei, proprio scenico: finestre, tende, tapparelle. Tale trio è appe- come non mi permetterei di prendermi gioco di lei. so sopra un tappeto bianco perfettamente curato. Tuttavia in questo biancore niveo è stata ritaglia- Per accompagnarne la prima esposizione, tuttavia, ta un’apertura per una scala che conduce al piano Jackson ha realizzato una locandina che, benché inferiore. Di un nero untuoso e chiazzato, le scale “All Cut Up” installation view at François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, 2012. tacitamente, svolge una funzione rivelatrice e re- conducono a una intercapedine sotto il pavimento. Courtesy: the artist and François Ghebaly, Los Angeles dentrice. Sopra l’annuncio dell’artista, della galleria Una complessa impalcatura di metallo sostiene il e della mostra, troviamo due personaggi dei Sim- pavimento soprastante e ammassi di enormi botti- pson, uno accanto all’altro: il venditore di fumetti, glie del latte, caraffe per il vino e tazze da caffé, tut- grasso e con la coda di cavallo, e l’infido oligarca ti in ceramica, sono posizionati intorno ad essa. La Il lavori di Patrick Jackson sono affollati di cose, bisogni che lo trasformano in oggetto, le comples- nostre famiglie, alle nostre civiltà, benché le storie Mr. Burns. Sopra ciascuno dei due vi è una nuvolet- maggior parte di essi è coperta da un sottile strato sono folle di oggetti disposti in maniera studiata, se interazioni che lo trasformano in un Sé? Forse che raccontano non siano tutte negative. Con la loro ta in cui è riportato un discorso ben scritto. Il ven- nero di sughero bruciato, ma le gigantesche tazze svuotati dell’attrattiva delle loro (deboli) proprietà si trova tutto nella decima dimensione, e forse è lì aura deboluccia hanno però almeno un aspetto po- ditore di fumetti afferma che queste pile di ninnoli da caffé variano notevolmente in quanto a colore e affettive per diventare parte di un progetto più va- che siamo anche noi. sitivo: la democratizzazione degli oggetti artistici, rappresentano “un’attrezzatura scenica perfetta per aspetto, con le superfici smaltate in modi strani; al- sto. Così le innumerevoli statuine che reggono la- della scultura. Molte persone hanno qualcosa che un film contemporaneo di Dario Argento, attrezza- cune sembrano punteggiate da pustole di qualche stre di vetro a formare eleganti colonne infinite e La forma e il concetto non sono mai stati indisso- decora le pareti delle loro case, una stampa di Ansel tura impiegata prima per preannunciare e poi per malattia, altre presentano motivi che fanno pensare che, da vicino, rivelano centinaia di telamoni low- lubili. I corpi sono cose, cose che siamo noi. E così Adams o una copia de L’ultima cena di Leonardo Da perpetrare la morte, prematura e cruenta, di una bel- allo sperma; i colori sono irreali, chimici, strani. Si cost. Oppure le numerose tipologie di tazze da cola- è anche l’arte. Vinci. Questi trovano posto accanto ai fotoritratti di lissima e giovane commessa di un negozio di artico- tratta di ninnoli, forse, ma troppo eccentrici per po- zione incrostate e installate fra le impalcature edili- famiglia in posa realizzati da Olan Mills o alle im- li usati”. Mr. Burns dal canto suo risponde: “Gatti, ter adornare il tavolino di una nonna. Si può striscia- zie di un’intercapedine sotteranea praticabile; o gli Qui, con Patrick Jackson, abbiamo delle cose. Pic- magini del primo giorno di scuola dei figli. Perché cani, varie forme di abbracci e altri segni d’amore: re tra le barre metalliche dell’impalcatura e sbirciare oggetti rebus sulla scena del presunto omicidio/su- coli oggetti ornamentali senza pretese intellettuali e allora queste cose non dovrebbero poter agire allo le decorazioni perfette per i cubicoli di persone che dentro le tazze. Sul fondo di ciascuna di esse si tro- cidio di due gemelli omozigoti. Andrew Berardini ha installazioni high-concept, corpi misteriosi e mani- stesso modo, con lo stesso intento innocuamente svolgono lavori noiosi e ripetitivi. Le rappresentazio- va una sostanza differente, una storia diversa: grumi religiosamente percorso tutti gli scenari dell’artista chini vuoti, mucchi di fango e collezioni di tazze. E ornamentale? Sia i ninnoli sia la poster art sono fa- ni, destinate a raccogliere la polvere, di speranze e resinosi e dita annerite ricoperte di mosche, resine alla ricerca di un senso, raccogliendo bisbiglii in pro- poi abbiamo i corpi. Il suo e i nostri. Tutti messi in cilmente reperibili nella sede più vicina dell’Esercito sogni non riusciranno a rimpiazzare ciò che manca epossidiche e cristalli e cubetti di ghiaccio in plastica cinto di una confessione perennemente rimandata. mostra, così, semplicemente. della Salvezza. Per alcuni essere anodino è peggio di nelle loro vite insignificanti. Però quei piccoli oggetti che galleggiano dentro liquidi rappresi, lattiginosi e essere offensivo. Io preferirei offendere. di pessimo gusto sono molto teneri”. traslucidi, rossi e neri. Corpi e oggetti, tempo e possibilità. Provo un leggero odio per i ninnoli, le forme più basse di scultura. Quei piccoli oggetti decorativi che Mike Kelley ha recuperato da vari mercatini delle Sono oggetti scenici, pensati per essere usati in una Uscendo e salendo un’altra scala si giunge in una Secondo alcuni, tra il nulla di un punto singolo e l’in- si trovano esposti, ammassati e collocati in giro per pulci gli oggetti che costituiscono il nucleo centra- finzione, cose che possono essere animate solo at- terza stanza che domina le prime due. Qui trovia- finità di tutte le possibilità, per tutti i tempi, vi sono certe case. Quel leggero odio rivela l’amore che pro- le di una delle sue sculture più amate, More Love traverso le azioni. Inoltre, nonostante siano cose da mo una figura maschile, vestita di nero, con i capelli soltanto dieci linee, che ci consentono di arrivare vo per le cose che tali ninnoli sembrano poco effi- Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid, (1987), un arazzo quattro soldi, possono risultare tenere. neri, scalza, con la pelle nera e opaca e gli occhi in- fino alla decima dimensione [si tratta di concetti cacemente imitare: icone e reliquie, effigi e totem, composto con giocattoli fatti a mano e coperte lavo- cavati. Egli (esso?) sta in piedi lontano dalla scala, inerenti la teoria delle stringhe in Fisica, n.d.T]. Non cose fatte a mano e lavorate con cura. Gli oggetti rate a maglia, una giungla di cose realizzate da un In una strada ricoperta di foglie di Los Angeles, una in relazione con essa e con la scena sottostante, ma siamo in grado di concepire ciò che si trova oltre, possono preservare la memoria, portando inscritti migliaio di nonne per un migliaio di nipoti, gettate porta si apre su una folta moquette color rosso san- posizionato in modo da non rivolgere verso il basso per cui siamo bloccati a dieci. Naturalmente ci sono in sé o esaltando l’identità di un individuo, una fa- nei bidoni della spazzatura di un negozio dell’usato gue e su un appartamento svuotato di tutti i normali il suo sguardo privo di occhi. I manichini fanno sem- anche altre teorie. miglia, una civiltà, storie, sogni; i ninnoli, però, sem- e recuperate, a mo’ di prove, da Kelley. Le persone accessori della vita quotidiana. Sul pavimento di li- pre venire i brividi quando sono fuori contesto, spro- brano un’inconsistente approssimazione di quelle appartenenti alla classe operaia fanno i loro doni, noleum effetto parquet di una spoglia cucina sono porzionati (cfr. Charles Ray), troppo simili a dei corpi Per la scultura ne abbiamo tre. Una definizione co- produzioni: di poco valore, usa e getta, realizzati intessono relazioni ed esprimono il loro amore cre- posate due coperte color antracite ricoperte da senza però esserlo. Questo, l’effigie di un bambino munemente utilizzata della scultura è quella di arte con scarsa cura, facili da reperire e oggetto di una ando degli oggetti, i ricchi, invece, si limitano a com- utensili gettati alla rinfusa – un coltello, una chiave con bizzarri mani e piedi, è anche più inquietante. a tre dimensioni. Una cosa nello spazio. Collocata di superficiale ammirazione. Clown dal volto triste e prare delle cose. Anche Kelley si è spesso occupato inglese, una mazza da baseball – su una, accurata- Mi occorrono ripetute visite per riuscire a cogliere peso sopra un basamento, issata con una gru sopra vergini che piangono, astratti coyote del Sudovest e di ninnoli come se fossero affioramenti di un terreno mente disposti – un martello, un bastone, una scopa ogni particolare, per osservare le strane proporzioni una piazza, posata sulla mensola del caminetto, pos- cowboy texani che sorridono con aria furba, gattini psichico tipicamente statunitense, di un sentimento – sull’altra. Nel soggiorno le pareti bianche incorni- del manichino bambino, per prendere nota di tutte siamo passeggiarci intorno, forse persino prenderla strappalacrime con grandi occhioni luccicanti e anche rappresenta molto altro, benché, a differenza ciano nove diversi tavolini da caffé su cui si trovano le sostanze e le superfici di queste ceramiche, per in mano: è una cosa pensata per essere guardata in geli dalle ali bianche e i sorrisi da stronzi, un busto di delle coperte a maglia e delle scimmie fatte con i cal- cumuli di terra, palate di fango che sembrano merda tornare continuamente a sondare qualunque storia quanto tale. La scultura è il nostro corpo accanto al John F. Kennedy e il David di Michelangelo in qua- zini, i ninnoli siano prodotti industrialmente. Questa di dinosauro. Nelle due camere da letto oltre il sog- venga rivelata. Niente di letterario, come un intrec- suo corpo. È il nostro essere umani accanto al suo lunque dimensione, foggia e colore, tutti inventati moltitudine di oggetti industriali di scarso valore fa giorno vi sono due corpi. Entrambi indossano tute cio, si prospetta all’orizzonte. Una singolarità, uno essere un oggetto. Le opere d’arte sono effigi realiz- per prendere la polvere appoggiati sopra dei cen- apparire tutti gli oggetti un po’ più privi di significa- in denim identiche, hanno i volti coperti da barbe sdoppiamento, un triplicamento. Tre livelli. Nulla zate da noi, sostituti di esseri umani più mortalmen- trini, per creare confusione e senso di oppressione, to, tutte le emozioni umane un po’ meno importanti, nere e lunghi capelli, le mani giunte, i piedi scalzi e che venga spiegato. te fragili delle loro creazioni. costruiti per rompersi e per essere buttati via. certamente per qualche scopo nefasto. rigati da vene azzurre, gli occhi chiusi. Una quiete funerea aleggia sui gemelli motociclisti esposti nella Il Modernismo ha cercato di produrre un rinnova- Quale dimensione contiene lo spirito di vita, la sto- Per lo più il mio non è realmente odio, ma apatia. Le case straripanti di gingilli da quattro soldi sono camera ardente, nessuno dei due completamente e mento, di compiere una rivoluzione a livello d’im- ria passata che l’ha formato e i futuri potenziali e C’è perfino una punta di simpatia. I ninnoli rivelano deboli baluardi per i loro proprietari. Tutte quelle simultaneamente visibile. I cadaveri differiscono per magini e d’idee, di forma e di oggetto. La Colonna i desideri che lo costringono ad andare avanti, i alcuni dei segreti più vergognosi riguardo a noi, alle cose, realizzate con così poco amore, non possono il fatto che uno indossa guanti in lattice rossi, l’altro Infinita (1935-38) di Brancusi sembra suggerire che

210 211 February 2014 Review: Patrick Jackson at François Ghebaly Gallery Mizota, Sharon December 16 2013

Patrick Jackson, "The Third Floor" Installation View, 2013 (Courtesy of the Artist and Fran?ois Ghebaly Gallery)

Patrick Jackson’s show brought me to my knees—literally. The artist has remodeled François Ghebaly’s split-level gallery, building an entry-level floor above the semi-subterranean main space. Carpeted like a model home in thick white wall-to-wall, it makes the space seem less vertiginous and more like a traditional gallery. That is, until you see the hole in the floor.

Stairs lead down to what is perhaps best described as a half-floor, laced with metal scaffolding and dirt-colored carpet.

For anyone larger than a small child, standing upright is impossible. The basement-like space forces you to stoop or kneel, and then completes your obeisance by asking you to clamber unceremoniously over and through the metal bars.

Adding to the peril of the situation are many, many ceramic pots, clustered mercifully around the scaffolding’s uprights.

Most are black and charred looking, but several are brightly colored and textured, resembling oversize, grotesquely cheery coffee mugs. They are variously filled with what look like crystals, ice cubes, fingers or dung (complete with flies). The overall effect is of a crazy, long-neglected basement laboratory—perhaps once staffed by dwarves.

Upstairs on the walls are more docile abstract ceramic pieces titled “Blinds,” “Window,” and “Curtains,” suggesting comforts of domesticity that mask roiling pots of chaos below. “A Bit of Hollywood, Minus the Tinsel” Smith, Roberta May 31 2011

People who take things into their own hands and try to operate outside the institutional grid deserve our gratitude. So hats off to the organizers of “Greater LA,” a sprawling survey of recent art from Los Angeles arrayed in an immense, unrepentantly raw SoHo loft. It represents a tremendous effort on the part of three temporarily allied art professionals: Benjamin Godsill, a curator moonlighting from the New Museum; Joel Mesler, a partner in Untitled, an art gallery on the Lower East Side who began his art-dealing career in Los Angeles; and Eleanor Cayre, a New York collector and consultant who organized “The Station,” a large group show in Miami during the Basel Miami art fair in 2008.

The curators have selected a title that nervily echoes “Greater New York,” the messy survey of young local talent that MoMA PS 1 has mustered at five-year intervals since 2000. They have assembled more than 100 works by nearly 50 artists in painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, collage, film and video, and installation art. But the show comes off as a stew with too many cooks who never quite decided what they were making.

The opening wall text deplores the “second fiddle” status of Los Angeles to New York as an art scene, which seems a bit melodramatic. Fantastic artists have been emanating from Southern California for decades, as the 30-plus exhibitions of Pacific Standard Time, a multimuseum extravaganza beginning this fall in the Los Angeles region, will attest.

I would venture that New York long ago accepted it as an equal in the production of art, and that New Yorkers may even suspect that on a per-capita basis, Los Angeles harbors more good artists than New York does. New York has an edge in terms of sceny-ness because it has more galleries, but also because of prevailing urban conditions: density, a smaller movie industry, an encompassing subway system.

Basically this show seems to have blinked when it came to the risk of showing New York something it didn’t already know. It chose to concentrate on Los Angeles artists who are already familiar here, rather than treating us — in the spirit of “Greater New York” — to a display of work by younger or relatively unknown artists. As a result, while large and ambitious, it represents a missed opportunity.

Most of the artists here are under 40, which is not old, but too many of them have had two or more solo shows in New York galleries or been included in Whitney Biennials. Sterling Ruby, Mark Grotjahn, Karl Haendel, Alex Prager, Jonas Wood, Matt Johnson, Carter Mull, Jason Meadows and Pae White seem especially overexposed for this exercise, and often contribute to its status-quo feeling. So do several other familiar, less stellar talents, among them Skip Arnold, Andrea Bowers, Dennis Hollingsworth, Kaz Oshiro and Kori Newkirk.

And regardless of the stature of the artists, the selections often feel slight and cryptic; they don’t give you enough to go on, a chronic problem with large group shows. Mr. Oshiro is represented by a negligible single painting. Mr. Grot- jahn, who has an excellent exhibition at the Anton Kern Gallery, contributes three small drawings and three boxy masks and barely makes a dent. The immense stack of bulky beams by Mr. Ruby — covered in yellow Formica that has been scuffed, spray-painted and carved with the words “cry” and “cop” — is clearly intended to be one of the show’s centerpieces. It comments sardonically on Minimalism and its often baleful derivatives, among them anonymous geometric public art, and also conjures urban neglect, but it provides a rather scant notion of Mr. Ruby’s considerable talent. A group of his gnarly, oozing ceramics pieces would have been more vivid and helped cut down on the show’s general dryness.

Occasionally, better-known artists surprise. Eric Wesley’s mysterious two-part work consisting of a bronze sculpture that looks like the outer shell of its plaster cast, displayed nearby, is probably the best work he has ever shown in New York. The same goes for the three uncharacteristically restrained pale paintings, two involving strips of torn canvas, contributed by Matt Chambers.

Justin Lowe, who last made a splash with an immense installation called “Black Acid Co-op” (made with Jonah Free- man) at Deitch Projects in 2009, is back with weirdly assertive little collages made from the often lurid covers of paper- back books. And Anna Sew Hoy continues to make intriguing objects out of almost nothing — bits of cloth and metal — and some hand-built ceramic. Patrick Jackson’s “City Unborn (gold),” a precariously elegant arrangement of found and made objects on glass shelves, is from 2008, but it is better than most of the works that were in his debut at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in Chelsea last fall.

For the most part, the show’s energy comes from the relatively few younger or lesser known artists that are included. Some of them make work that could only be made in Los Angeles, including Melanie Schiff’s lush color photographs of the city’s largely dry, extravagantly graffitied aqueducts. Drew Heitzler evokes a bygone Hollywood innocence with dreamlike projections of appropriated films that feature the actors Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson as almost shockingly beautiful, untouched young men.

Joe Deutch’s tension-filled five-minute video “Boot, Re-Boot,” shows him brazenly attaching an automobile boot to a police cruiser in broad daylight on a Los Angeles street, extending the tradition of incendiary performance works initiated some 30 years ago in Southern California by Chris Burden. Nearby an inexplicably touching video by Melodie Mousset gives a violent subject — stoning — a happy ending through the use of a kind of reverse pantomime: the artist is shown with stones held to her head by elastic bands while white-gloved hands appear and cut them off, one by one.

Alex Israel’s installation “Property,” consists of found objects that form a kind of tawdry sculptural rebus about the pursuit of physical perfection by evoking the body, gyms, medicine and illicit sex. A label adds a Los Angeles slant by informing us that the assembled items have been rented from a prop house where they will be returned once the show closes.

Aaron Wrinkle contributes a completely hapless painting, but also presents documentation about the short busy life of a small gallery that he instigated and named for the Post-Minimalist artist Dan Graham, who also briefly had a gallery in New York some 40 years ago. Shoe-horned into a large closet, the intriguing display includes a wall-mounted wood file of material that might almost be a Graham sculpture and a small dark abstraction by Peter Demos, one of several artists who exhibited at Dan Graham.

Both Brian Kennon and Matt Lipps are finding new things to do with various blurrings of set-up and re-photography, making smart, visually arresting art-about-art that relates to the work of East Coast artists like Sara VanDerBeek and Anne Collier. And Olga Koumoundouros brings new life to the tired found-object formula, combining using a classic Eames lounge chair and ottoman, a Brancusi-like column of Himalayan salt lamps and a bit of spray paint to funkily totemic effect.

Organizing large group shows is often tantamount to herding cats. This one gives every sign of having gotten away from its organizers. But if their effort disappoints, it also gets an important ball rolling. Ideally, regular updates on new developments from Los Angeles should be a part of the New York exhibition diet, and vice versa. It would help art on both coasts. http://www.artslant.com/ny/articles/picklist#p18781

September 12, 2010

A thirsty man in a lounge chair once asked, “if you throw an empty glass into a swimming pool, is it still an empty glass?” He was an artist, and what he was getting at was the question of content. Posed slightly differently, if you make an artwork with random and/or largely unconsidered subject matter but concentrate heavily on the process of making the work, will the work be devoid of content? The Los Angles based artist, Patrick Jackson, just opened a solo exhibition at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery called Tchotchke Stacks and it presents that very conundrum. Jackson, who was trained as a sculptor (he became a Master in 2007 at the University of Southern California), is a thrift store aficionado. To create his Stacks Jackson traveled from store to store, selecting objects for their structural durability; subject matter was irrelevant. (Short list: the Virgin Mary, clowns, cuddly goats, kitties, little boys, angles, a DEA agent and his K-9 hurdling a window sill, etc.) Depending on the strength of the object, whether it could hold a little or a lot of weight, Jackson incorporated it into a Stack. The stronger pieces went to the bottom, the weaker ones to the top. Jackson’s mastery came into play during assembly. There are fourteen Stacks in the exhibition, mostly around five and a half feet tall. Each stack (except for one) has six levels. On each level are four tchotchkes that support a piece of glass, which the tchotckes on the next level up rest upon. Since the tchotckes are obviously not uniform in height Jackson’s built little mirrored plinths that even everything out. He uses coins to fine-tune the balancing act (gallery floors aren’t perfectly level it turns out). If the pieces seem trite or dumb, well, keep in mind that Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes were too at first. Jackson’s formal arrangement of so many campy knick-knacks seems to fuse the low-brow sensibility of Pop artists like Warhol with the structural approach of sculptors like Donald Judd or Richard Serra (both of whom have made their own “Stacks”). It’s impressive that it’s all-freestanding, and because of that walking through Stacks almost feels dangerous, like getting drunk in a glass house. Beyond the constructive element the collected objects resonate with renewed purpose. They’re architectural now. Transformed. Questions of content point to regenerative cycles of use. The empty glass thrown in the pool becomes a submerged glass until it’s removed from the pool and is full of water. --Charlie Schultz Images: Details and installation views of Tchotchke Stacks (2009), mixed media. Courtesy the artist and Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery.

“Patrick Jackson: Picks 5.21.08” Mizota, Sharon May 21, 2008

Black and Midnight Blue, 2008

05.03.08-06.07.08 Chung King Project / Francois Ghebaly

Like a model city built from an exotic Tinkertoy set, Patrick Jacksonʼs exhibition “City Unborn” blends references to early modernism, Surrealism, and finish fetish to create an ur-city, the id of urban planning. The eight table-height sculptures that compose the installation are made of fiberboard boxes of varying dimensions, painted with generic shades of lustrous car paint and topped with alternating layers of clear glass and small gray cement pyramids. Seen from across the room, the stacks of pyramids form undulating columns, reminiscent of Constantin Brancusiʼs Endless Column, 1938, itself an ur-form connecting heaven and earth. Viewed from above, they cast complex reflections in the glass that suggest the fractured planes of a Futurist drawing. These delicate structures would almost be classic modernist sculptures were they not punctuated with decidedly less streamlined objects. In one piece, glass shelves rise from a slim ocher base to display a wrench, a wooden cane, a huge lollipop, and a black plastic comb. In another, a long, skinny box is laced with an industrial metal chain; the smooth blue surface of a third is inset with a rusty sewer grate. These mundane incursions, with their surreal scalar and tonal contrasts, disrupt the purity of the rectilinear sculptures and amplify their status as imaginary, dreamlike forms. While the modern city plan is typically proposed in the name of reason and order, these fragile, uncanny structures gently point out the irrational underside of the utopian enterprise.