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Richard Jackson: Unexpected Unexplained at Schirn Kunsthalle

Richard Jackson: The War Room, 2006-2007

Richard Jackson: The War Room, 2006-2007. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Richard Jackson: Unexpected Unexplained at Schirn The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is assembling five characteristic rooms by Richard Jackson ―room installations based on the principle of automated painting. February 6 – May 3, 2020]]>

Source: Schirn Kunsthalle

More than any other artist of his time, Richard Jackson (*1939) has focused his attention on the radical expansion of painting. The American artist pushes the formal boundaries of the picturesque and creates situations, which link the application of the paint through the use of machines to its processual aspect. Jackson combines critical commentaries on painting with social contexts, pairing them with provocative wit and ambiguities, as well as references to iconic works by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Inside the rooms, comic-like figures, animals, or objects become the protagonists in a unique processair compressors and pumps cause rich colors to flow through tubes and funnels, through ears, mouths, and other body orifices and spread them across the floor, walls, furnishings, and the protagonists themselves. The thematic rooms document a painting process which is detached from the artist and expands into the spatial. By the time visitors enter the space, it is all over. They become the investigators of the previous spectacular painting act and voyeurs of bizarre scenarios.

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Richard Jackson: Unexpected Unexplained at Schirn Kunsthalle