Alex Jackson

Alex Jackson (b. 1993, Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an artist whose practice merges painting and writing through narrative and worldbuilding as conceptual frameworks for image making. Centered around a continuously expanding text authored by a fictional character known as The Architect, Jackson’s work constructs speculative worlds that examine Black life, memory, identity, and possibility outside of colonial frameworks and conventional systems of representation.

Within this evolving narrative, The Architect records visions emerging from the obsidian walls of a volcanic dwelling, describing the arrival of a figure known as “E,” whose presence fractures conventional understandings of matter, time, physics, and perception. Through these speculative structures, Jackson develops a visual and conceptual language that moves beyond linear narrative, fixed color theory, and inherited racial imaginaries, positioning Blackness as a site of generative possibility rather than limitation.

Jackson lives and works in the greater Philadelphia area. He received a BFA from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2015 and an MFA from Yale University in 2017. He has attended residencies at Yale Norfolk, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Yaddo. Recent exhibitions include Chrysalis at Jenkins Johnson Projects, Brooklyn (2021), and Earthgrazer at Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston (2023). His work is included in the collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; and the de Young Museum, San Francisco.

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Jenkins Johnson Gallery will participate in Art Basel Miami Beach, December 8 - 10, 2023 Booth B31. We will feature artists that explore social and political issues of the African Diaspora by connecting past and current moments: Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Wadsworth Jarrell, Gordon Parks, Ming Smith, Patrick Alston, Adrian Burrell, Dewey Crumper, Lisa Corinne Davis, Violet Fields, Alex Jackson, Blessing Ngobeni, Gregory Rick, Enrico Riley, and Raelis Vasquez. Jenkins Johnson Gallery will be participating in the Kabinett sector with a solo presentation of works on paper by Mary Lovelace O'Neal, featuring her iconic Lampblack (1970's) and Desert Women (1990's) series. In the Lampblack drawings she layers black charcoal and pastel, allowing slivers of negative space to invade the surface. These drawings speak to her affair with an "uncluttered minimalist viewpoint", invoking both a cultural and aesthetic sentiment. In Desert Women series, Lovelace O'Neal portrays garments worn in the Sahara Desert in Egypt and the Atacama Desert in Chile. She studied with master printmaker James Lesene Wells and at The Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Lovelace O'Neal creates based on feeling and perception, forming moments of fleeting light. Her work is in museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Baltimore Museum, DeYoung Museum, and Brooklyn Museum. She has an upcoming solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in Spring 2024.