Matthew Day Jackson "Terranaut"
Peter Blum Gallery
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In Terranaut Matthew Day Jackson investigates the fundamental themes of death, belief, and transcendence in order to illuminate a sense of lived purgatory. The majority of the works in this show address death in several manifestations from recreations of Francisco de Goya’s The Disasters of War to references to the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. Coupled with these representations of death is Jackson’s emphasis on the importance of creativity as a life force and his continued interest in the concept of the American dream (for example over-size reproductions of paintings by Albert Bierstadt). Jackson sees something redemptive in the relationship between death and creativity, since much of the work alludes to the possibility of transcendence in both material and spiritual forms. His use of salvaged and recycled materials holds explicit communicative values. For Jackson, materials, ideas, and individuals can regenerate into new configurations, which in his aesthetic and philosophical constellation is an affirmation of the creative process. Jackson also believes that in order to develop into the next stages of personal growth one must always shed one's own skin—a literal and metaphoric molting essential for survival. For example, Terranaut (Apollo Space Suit), an astronaut's suit made of felt and suspended from a pole, underlines this idea that every explorer must leave something essential behind if he or she wish to access a new level of consciousness. With Terranaut Jackson has devised an environment where heterogeneous elements interact in order to create a meditation on existence and the redemptive aspects of individual and collective creativity.
Media
Schedule
from September 12, 2008 to November 01, 2008