Matthew Day Jackson: Terranaut

Peter Blum is pleased to announce the exhibition Matthew Day Jackson Terranaut: Sculptures and Paintings, opening on September 12th, 2008 at Peter Blum Chelsea, 526 West 29th Street. This will be Jackson’s first one-person exhibition with Peter Blum Gallery and his third solo show in New York. In... Read more

Peter Blum is pleased to announce the exhibition Matthew Day Jackson Terranaut: Sculptures and Paintings, opening on September 12th, 2008 at Peter Blum Chelsea, 526 West 29th Street. This will be Jackson’s first one-person exhibition with Peter Blum Gallery and his third solo show in New York. In 2007 Matthew Day Jackson was part of a two-person show (with Huma Bhabha) featuring sculptures and new print editions at Peter Blum Soho.

In Terranaut Matthew Day Jackson investigates the fundamental themes of death, belief, and transcendence in order to illuminate a sense of lived purgatory. The majority of the works in this show address death in several manifestations from recreations of Francisco de Goya’s The Disasters of War to references to the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. Coupled with these representations of death is Jackson’s emphasis on the importance of creativity as a life force and his continued interest in the concept of the American dream (for example over-size reproductions of paintings by Albert Bierstadt). Jackson sees something redemptive in the relationship between death and creativity, since much of the work alludes to the possibility of transcendence in both material and spiritual forms. His use of salvaged and recycled materials holds explicit communicative values. For Jackson, materials, ideas, and individuals can regenerate into new configurations, which in his aesthetic and philosophical constellation is an affirmation of the creative process. Jackson also believes that in order to develop into the next stages of personal growth one must always shed one’s own skin—a literal and metaphoric molting essential for survival. For example, Terranaut (Apollo Space Suit), an astronaut’s suit made of felt and suspended from a pole, underlines this idea that every explorer must leave something essential behind if he or she wish to access a new level of consciousness. With Terranaut Jackson has devised an environment where heterogeneous elements interact in order to create a meditation on existence and the redemptive aspects of individual and collective creativity.

Matthew Day Jackson was born 1974 in Panorama City, CA and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Jackson completed his M.F.A at Mason Gross School of Arts, Rutgers University. National and international solo exhibitions include shows at Mario Diacono, Boston, MA (2007); the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX (2007); the Cubitt Artists Space, London, England (2006); the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, OR (2006). In addition, Jackson’s work was exhibited in group shows at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA (2008); the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (2008); the Whitney Biennial, NY (2006) and Greater New York, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, NY (2005).