About
T1+2 Gallery presents the first major solo exhibition of British artist Piers Jackson, featuring the most recent series of his works, developed between 2006 and 2007.
The show will open with a wine reception on the 12th of June from 7-9pm with a Private View of the artists work. The exhibition will show from the 13th of June to the 27th of July.
While continuing to draw inspiration from the Ancient belief in the sacred meaning of geometric forms (such as those related to the Egyptian pyramid at Giza) and from the Medieval and early Renaissance alchemical significance of colours, Jackson's new series combine layers of grey and pink card, tactile gold leaf and third-dimensional concaveness in beautifully rigorous compositions of geometric shapes. The entwinement of concave geometries and gold leaf creates iridescent possibilities of inner, invisible spaces beyond material surfaces towards which the viewer is calmly but powerfully impelled, as in The Flame, Octa-Tetrahedron and The Invisible Memento.
In spite of the works' aesthetic precision which could give the impression of a will to totally control the artistic process of geometric, luminous and quasi sculptural composition, Jackson is in fact interested in that which escapes willful choices and emotionally expressive gestures, that is, the effacement of his own presence. Departing from primordial solids such as the sphere, the cube and the tetrahedron, the artist intends to explore the perfection of ideal forms while simultaneously acknowledging the inevitable failures inherent to this perpetual search by means of incorporating optical distortions, illusion effects and slight geometric impreciseness into some of the works.
Furthermore, as in alchemical chemistry, colours are symbolically ascribed properties of matter. Gold symbolises the pure or unburnt, whilst grey stands for its opposite burnt matter or perhaps ashes , while finally pink, similarly to the third, closing line of a triangle within a perfect, unifying circle, mediates the former two by consisting of a symbol for flame. Besides geometry and colour, another highly significant element occurs the crow. Albeit seemingly isolated in the context of this series in which geometries and colours consistently reappear for it only emerges in The Pink Crows , this figurative element is nevertheless recurrent in that particular work and within Jackson's previous series. Its uncanny doubled-single presence seems to point towards an enigmatic disruption of the quietly harmonious geometries surrounding it (them).
Inspired by Socratic as well as Stoic philosophy, Jackson's works embody both a dialogic and aphoristic (or open and at the same time hermetic) method of aesthetic investigation of beauty, truth and good as the foundational triad of a world of forms beneath which the artist finds but âapparent reality'. Moreover, the works procure a sense of peacefulness that compellingly engages the viewer in a phenomenological journey of perceptual movement not only within the physical space of and around the work but also in the mental (perhaps even spiritual) space opened up by it.
Significantly, Jackson mentions the relevance of âthe mind's eye' whose appeasing yet intense activity is at the source of both the artist's creative process and the viewer's meditative contemplation. In other words, the eye of the mind is that which allows for the mediated space of a continuous dialogue between geometric and non-geometric forms, flat and concave surfaces, bright and shadowy lights, visible and invisible absences and presences, still and moving objects and bodies or the encounter with a possibility of beauty.
Piers Jackson was born in 1970 in Jamaica. He lives in London, UK. His work has been exhibited widely, including New Gothic, Tate Britain, 2006, Lemon Skye Projects, Miami, USA, 2006, and Port Eliot Literary Festival, 2005. His solo shows comprise of John Brown Publishing, London, 2001, and two consecutive exhibitions at St Georges Hall, London, 1998/1999. Between 1990 and 1996 Jackson worked closely together with Jade Jagger, appearing in several shows, namely at Artiste assoife W11, The Collection SW3, and Palais Royale 1 Arrondissement. Since 2006 he has been working towards this new series of works.
