Richard Jackson Works With Books

20 Mar - 6 Jun 2021

Los Angeles

‘Paint every page of each book, while still wet stack the books filling a room, wall to wall, floor to ceiling.’

–Richard Jackson, 1977

About

About the Presentation Beginning in the early 1970s, lifelong Californian Richard Jackson’s Wall Paintings, Stacks, and Room-themed installations gave rise to a series of landmark innovations in painting, sculpture, performance, installation, and the relations between them.

Jackson’s interest in the larger possibilities of artmaking and how it can be done extends to books, as well. Organized by Dagny Corcoran, a longtime friend of Jackson’s and author of the expansive chronology in Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ 2020 monograph on the artist, this Book & Printed Matter Lab presentation highlights Jackson’s artist’s books and supporting archival material, displaying the artist’s preoccupation with the ambiguous requirements of codex, content, format, and purpose of a publication.

Below is a playlist created by Chris Kidd, author and dear friend of Jackson's, as the aural backdrop for the presentation. An eclectic selection of the obscure and eternal, interspersed with nods to Richard's longstanding love of opera, this playlist encapsulates the life and career of an artist who has never been bound by easy categorization.

Photo: Richard Jackson in front of ’Big Ideas (1000 Pictures),’ Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles CA, 1980