Parker Gallery and Marc Selwyn Fine Art are proud to present the inaugural West Coast exhibitions with polymath artist Gerald Jackson (b. 1936, Chicago, IL). Parker Gallery’s exhibition will focus on rarely seen paintings and skid constructions from the 1980s, made while the artist was living in a loft on the Bowery in New York City. Reflecting on his decision to use skids as material supports, Jackson noted, “I chose those because the skids already had their own power and strength. They were strong; they were used to hold heavy equipment. And I always thought I needed something else that already had strength, that I could pull my stuff and myself with it, because I didn’t have that backup. So with Egyptian art it was the same thing—they had their own power, and I could easily add my own taste, or touch to that. And then with the skids, they already had their own strength.” [1]
Marc Selwyn Fine Art’s concurrent exhibition will highlight the artist’s more recent works which explore the metaphysical and visual power of blue and green. For Jackson, an African-American artist born in 1936 who is familiar with America’s racial divisions, blue and green are the two colors which most successfully move beyond race and tap into a universal realm of human spirituality and healing. Jackson’s paintings, often executed on discarded materials from his neighborhood, also engage in a conscious dialogue with the history of American Abstraction. Vibrant juxtapositions of blue and green rectangles, occasionally interrupted by thin vertical lines, may recall the zips of Barnett Newman or Rothko’s evocative fields of color.
[1] “Gerald Jackson by Stanley Whitney,” in The Oral History Project series, BOMB Magazine (January 19, 2016).
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