On View: Friday, May 1, 2009 - June 6, 2009
Exhibition Hours: Wednesday through Saturday 12pm - 6pm and by appointment
Opening Reception: Friday, May 1, 2009 from 7pm - 10pm
For All Night Flight, Erick Jackson has created over 60 color pencil drawings plus a large-scale drawing installation of imagery plucked from adolescence and psychic memory. From B-movies, rock music culture, and late night 1980’s cable television shows, Jackson takes us through his fecund memories and imagination, presenting an aesthetic disappearing from our contemporary vernacular.
Drawing from a freakishly strong memory, for months Jackson researched movies and television shows for visual equivalents of memories of exact moments lodged in his mind since childhood. The pungent seventies aesthetic of the occult; endless car chases; and bizarre children’s shows of a psychedelic era shaped the artist’s young mind, depositing fertile material to draw from in the present day.
According to the artist, "certain stills from these works have been etched into my psyche and reappear in my artwork and music again and again. Themes of the anti-hero, danger, paranoia and beauty have remained consistent in my mind and they have defined my likes and dislikes. These impressions are not necessarily drawn from ‘spooky’ images but they were based in fear and wonder. Certain things just freaked you out as a kid and made you want to know more. It is this longing to know that continues to enrich the mystery.”
For the exhibition, Jackson departed from his laborious painting style to the flexibility of color pencil to create an expanding body of fluid, saturated images uniquely framed and positioned on the gallery walls. From depictions of phantasms to night marauders to skateboarding and life post-apocalypse, Jackson lives up to his image-maker reputation in this ambitious exhibition.
Erick Jackson graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in the early 1990s. He has had solo exhibitions at Civilian Art Projects, Transformer and the D.C. Arts Center. He has a forthcoming exhibition at Good Children Gallery in New Orleans and a solo exhibition at Sala Diaz in San Antonio in 2010. A musician and visual artist, he founded the band the Apes in 1999.
Special thanks to the Stadnyk Family at Frame Mart Gallery in Cleveland Park for the wonderful custom frames. .
May 1 - June 6, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, May 1, 2009, 7 - 10pm
For All Night Flight, Erick Jackson has created over 60 color pencil drawings plus a large-scale drawing installation of imagery plucked from adolescence and psychic memory. From B-movies, rock music culture, and late night 1980’s cable television shows, Jackson takes us through his fecund memories and imagination, presenting an aesthetic disappearing from our contemporary vernacular.
