Dale Jackson

White Columns is pleased to present the first New York exhibition by the Cincinnati-based artist Dale Jackson. Jackson is affiliated with Visionaries + Voices, a Cincinnati studio program and gallery that supports a community of artists living and working with developmental disabilities.

Jackson’s exhibition comprises a group of large-scale text works made with ink markers on colored sheets of poster board. Each work consists of a sequence of consecutive sheets (ranging between ten and twenty-three individual drawings) that together form open-ended and free-associative narratives that draw from Jackson’s own biography (including references to specific locales and neighborhoods in his native Cincinnati), his quotidian daily routines (Dale works at a local Kroger supermarket), as well as illuminating his preoccupying interests in cars, travel, and popular music (and in particular the music of Motown and The Beatles.)

Typically completed in a single sitting, Jackson’s sequential drawings present a fragmentary, staccato-like form of story-telling where aspects of his daily life intersect with remembered scenes from movies and television shows or song lyrics. Despite being created as sequential works (e.g. each successive sheet in a multi-part work is identified as ‘Page 1’, ‘Page 2’, etc.) the individual drawings invariably close with the words ‘The End’, suggesting that each ‘text’ might be considered as an autonomous statement. At White Columns a group of individual drawings – no longer part of sequential works – are presented in a ‘stack’ like formation that the viewer is encourage to peruse.

Over the past few years Jackson has produced hundreds of such drawings and seen together they provide us with a vivid account of his life and the things that inspire him, in turn creating a ‘portrait’ – of sorts – of the artist. Filled with humor, humanity and pathos Dale Jackson’s work – despite its biographical specificity – ultimately speaks to something larger, more fundamental and perhaps even universal.

Dale Jackson lives and works in Cincinnati, OH. His work has been included in exhibitions at Visionaries + Voices, Cincinnati; Thunder-Sky Inc., Cincinnati; and the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati.

White Columns would like to thanks everyone at Visionaries + Voices for their assistance and enthusiasm about presenting Dale’s work for the first time in New York.  To learn more about Visionaries and Voices, visit:  www.visionariesandvoices.com