Matthew Day Jackson (born 1974) is an American artist whose multifaceted practice encompasses sculpture, painter, collage, photographer, 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, his numerous solo exhibitions have marked him out as one of the most inventive and thought-provoking artists of his generation. 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.
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Jackson’s art grapples with big ideas such as the evolution of human thought, the fatal attraction of the frontier and the faith man places in technological advancement. His work particularly addresses the myth of the American Dream, exploring the forces of creation, growth, transcendence and death through visions of its failed utopia. Recent work expands on these underlying ideas inherent in the American mythology and focuses on the plurality of this mythology pointing to its existence outside American Culture. Individual sculptures and paintings interconnect with each other to create complex scenarios that revisit history and reassemble its narratives. His work is frequently monumental, imposing not only on a large scale physically but also conceptually, occupying an intellectual terrain that reaches from ancient history to Outer Space exploration and discovery.
His works utilise a familiar iconography, recycling culturally loaded images such as the geodesic structures of Buckminster Fuller, mankind’s first steps on the moon, and the covers of LIFE magazine from the ’60s and ’70s, cross-pollinating these and mixing them with numerous references from art history. Jackson depicts these using the world around him: scorched wood, molten lead, mother-of-pearl, precious metals, formica, and found objects such as worn T-shirts, prosthetic limbs, axe handles and posters, for instance. These diverse materials resonate with symbolism, combining apocalyptic elements with the fruits of new technologies, historical imagery with contemporary ingredients. In his art ideas are granted physical form, and it is in the clash between the two, in the material impact of idealist thought, that it derives its force.
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.
2012
"In Search Of..." Gemeente Museum, The Hague, Netherlands
2011
"Everything Leads to Another," Hauser & Wirth, London, England
"In Search Of..." MAMbo, Bologna, Italy
"In Search Of..." Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland
2009
"The Immeasurable Distance," MIT List Visual Art Center, Cambridge MA
2007
"Paradise Now! (The Salvage) Workspace Matthew Day Jackson," The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin TX
2006
"Paradise Now!" Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland OR
2004
"By No Means Necessary," The Locker Plant, Chinati Foundation, Marfa TX
2011
"Autobody: Featuring North of South West of East," Ballroom Marfa, Marfa TX
"Singular Visions," Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY
"The World Belongs to You," Palazzo Grassi, Francois Pinault Foundation, Venice, Italy
"The Shape We're In," Zabludowicz Collection, London, England
"American Exuberance," Rubell Family Collection/Contemporary Arts Foundation, Miami FL
2010
"Born in Dystopia," Rosenblum Collection, Paris, France
2009
"The World is Yours," Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
"Deceitful Moon," Hayward Gallery Project Space, London, England
"Mapping the Studio: Artists from the Francois Pinault Collection," Venice, Italy
2008
"Heartland," Van Abbemuseum, Eindoven, The Netherlands
2006
"USA Today," Royal Academy of Art, London, England
"Uncertian States of America - American Art in the Third Millenium" Serpentine Gallery, London (Travelling Exhibition)
2005
"The Greater New York," PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York NY
2003
"Biennial," Portland Museum of Art, Portland OR