Richard Jackson @ Hauser & Wirth

One afternoon last week I was wondering through the streets of Mayfair when my attention was taken by a huge neon clad yellow horse. The beast was hanging upside down in the window of the Hauser & Wirth gallery on Saville Row. It didn’t take me long to release that the finishes touches were being made inside to an exhibition of new work by the American artist Richard Jackson.

Richard Jackson as you may already be aware has been a pre-eminent figure in American contemporary art since the 1970s. His style explores a performative painting process that uses paint as a ubiquitous liquid that is spurted and splattered all over his installations. The finished result mixes sculpture and paint with neon light resulting a completely different style.

The new exhibition features some iconic and somewhat crude images including ‘Pain-t’ (2012) which depicts a line-up of cartoon like boys with their paints down coated in paint. Sitting alongside that piece is ‘Copy Room’ (2014), a still life showing a sex doll sat astride a photocopier with legs spread. The kind of thing you may see at a rather wild and debaucherous office party.

If your preferred style of art is bold, colourful and a touch on the racy side then this exhibit is one that you must see!

Richard Jackson
Hauser&Wirth, 23 Saville Row, London
Until 26th July 2014