Alex Jackson: Drawings
A World of Seers and Lookers
Jenkins Johnson Gallery is thrilled to present 13 drawings by Alex Jackson. Jackson’s practice is driven by a narrative text he has built over several years. Jackson’s narrative painting centers around the Seers, a group of tiled and reflective beings, the gaseous beings known as the Lookers. He uses his practice as a departure point to explore the entanglement between the visual mechanics of space, history, and the body, and the experience of these beings both embodied and imagined.
The Seers and Lookers

Within Alex Jackson’s created world, we see recurring figures known as the Seers and the Lookers. These entities relate back to how we are taught to “see” and break down, consume, and re-present the world. Jackson challenges the viewer to explore new meaning through color and how we perceive illusions presented in his works.

Seers are characters who are portrayed with tiled bodies, which they use to reflect light and convert shadow energy into food for the body. It is known as “Umbrasynthesis”, an anti-photosynthetic process.

Lookers are mainly seen as singular or pairs of floating eyes. Unlike the seers, the lookers require seeing as a metabolic process of consumption.
"The artist [Alex Jackson] is seemingly offering the audience the freedom to explore a world shifted a few degrees from our own, for the sake of imagination, but also at the possible expense of its inhabitants." - Gerald E. Sheffield II
Jackson has developed a strange and surreal world that brings to focus ideas of placelessness and transition. Figures and objects transition physically and metaphysically through socio-economic boundaries, stereotypes, and categorization. Jackson creates a new perception of reality by challenging us to question what is actually present versus what he chooses to show us. Often Jackson uses grids to refer to the classification of organic materials such as rocks, land, or people. Space is broken down. Faces are gridded, dividing up the skin like a topographic map.
Alex Jackson and Gerald E. Sheffield II in Conversation with Karen Jenkins-Johnson
Jackson's works pose questions that Elude easy answers. In Untitled (Sun Suit) we are left wondering if the sun suit offers protection, energy, or perhaps burdens the wearer.

"I want the paintings to be slippery and hard to pin down. I’m not interested in anything that makes them easier, whether that be the language used to describe it, or the paintings themselves". - Alex Jackson
Alex Jackson was selected by curator Larry Ossei-Mensah as one of his Curator’s Picks for Untitled, Miami Beach. He was recently featured in Block Party at Jenkins Johnson Projects, New York and has appeared on the cover of New American Paintings. He has been reviewed in The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. Jackson has exhibited at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the Elmhurst Art Museum, and the Chazen Museum of Art. He has attended residencies at Yale Norfolk, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Royal Drawing School at Dumfries House. Upcoming projects include a solo exhibition at Jenkins Johnson Projects in Brooklyn (Date to be Determined), and a 3 person exhibition at the Mennello Museum of Art in Orlando, slated for April 2021. He has a MFA from Yale University, and a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jackson lives and works in New Haven, CT.
- Alex Jackson, Untitled, 2017
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to listen to the podcast, TINTAMARRE

Freedom Within Imagination

w. painter ALEX JACKSON

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Alex Jackson: Drawings

Alex Jackson: Drawings

The Seers and Lookers

"The artist [Alex Jackson] is seemingly offering the audience the freedom to explore a world shifted a few degrees from our own, for the sake of imagination, but also at the possible expense of its inhabitants." - Gerald E. Sheffield II

Alex Jackson and Gerald E. Sheffield II in Conversation with Karen Jenkins-Johnson

**Jackson's works pose questions that Elude easy answers. In Untitled (Sun Suit) we are left wondering if the sun suit offers protection, energy, or perhaps burdens the wearer.**

"I want the paintings to be slippery and hard to pin down. I’m not interested in anything that makes them easier, whether that be the language used to describe it, or the paintings themselves". - Alex Jackson

Click here

to listen to the podcast, TINTAMARRE

Freedom Within Imagination

w. painter ALEX JACKSON

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