Marble
56 x 23 x 27 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco
Photo: Isaiah Plaza
About
Jackson spent extended periods in 1983 and 1985 in Carrara, Italy, working on marble sculptures, which he has continued in his studio in Oakland, California.
In an art historical sense one might perceive the figures in his otherwise abstract paintings as an attempt to resolve or at least investigate the space between abstraction and figuration. That would be wrong. His figures are not trying to become something else, they exist in between states — being and becoming, living and dead, dreaming and awake. In this way Jackson walks away from a strictly Western approach to meaning (and the canon of contemporary art) and instead embraces a spectrum of cultural references that can vacillate from ancient and tribal art to a strict focus on materials and what they themselves mean. Jackson is not just in dialogue with his contemporaries, he is in dialogue with art history itself.
