Jackson Berger

Maurice Presents: Jackson’s House

Maurice, Baltimore

Saturday, May 20th, 2023

Photography by Vivian Doering

On Action Painting and the World-As-Picture, an essay by Wayne J. Froman from The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader, Froman concludes:

Action painting “looks for” the dynamic in which the art of painting originates. Action painting proceeds by making the motion of painting the subject of painting. The open-ended movements of the painter animated by strains or tensions in the traces left on the canvas of the overlap of the visual and motor fields, discompose the apprehension of world-as-picture. In the oscillation of those traces between associations out of which images emerge and a sheer interplay with other such traces, action paintings hold open possibilities for modes of world-apprehension other than the apprehension of world-as-picture essential to the metaphysical foundations of the modern epoch. This makes action painting, foundational art. (Froman, 347)

Maurice proudly presents Maurice Presents: Jackson’s House, an exhibition of experimental paintings and sculpture by the eponymous Jackson Berger.

Berger’s exhibition is both a semblance of new canvases by the artist, as well as sculptural works that represent the artist plunging into the void; taking a leap of faith as a self-sacrifice; a crucifixion of the artist in the name of art.

This exhibition is divided into dichotomous halves: a traditional installation of new paintings on the main level (located in the kitchen and living room, respectively) and upstairs where an experimental, installation-based sculpture, Merz, resides.

Merz calls to mind the work, Merzbau by early 20th-century German Dadaist, Kurt Schwitters.

Schwitters’ art was more than just the collage object itself. It was a whole process, philosophy, and lifestyle, which he called merz—a nonsense word that became his kind of personal brand. He was a merz-artist who made merz-paintings and merz-drawings, and naturally, the place where he merzed—his studio and family home—was his merz-building, or Merzbau. Over the years, this Merzbau developed into a kind of abstract walk-in collage composed of grottoes and columns and found objects, ever-shifting and ever-expanding. It was more than just a studio; it was itself a work of art. (Elisabeth Thomas, “In Search of Lost Art: Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau, moma.org, July 2012, https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/07/09/in-search-of-lost-art-kurt-schwitterss-merzbau/)

Berger’s Merz is an explosion of sculptural and painterly forms converging with a gravitas and simultaneous, spontaneous levity; dichotomy of high vs. low, silliness vs. sophistry, and traditional artistic materials vs. space. The artist works intuitively with ripped and repurposed paintings, cheap cardboard, mylar, acrylic paint, oil stick, and paper towels to suggest the echos of eternal architectures; ghosts and memories imbued within Jackson’s House itself. The non-archival ephemerality of Merz pays homage to Schwitters’ great masterpiece, and its eventual destruction during an Allied bombing raid in 1943 by making a work of a deliberately temporary nature. Merz represents a catharsis for Berger, and bejewels this exhibition with an architectural, quasi self-portrait, balanced by the more measured survey of paintings on the main floor.

The paintings on the main level of Maurice, while installed traditionally, are anything but conventional. Stretched canvases are torn to smithereens, exposing their wooden substrates and wall beneath, replaced and reformed with a nihilistic futility with haphazard vintage textiles appropriated from old fashions. Colored mylar is stapled and MacGyver’d to the backs of the works, tinting the white walls supporting them. The paintings obliterate, and simultaneously kiss the ring of Action Painting: a kiss of death. Abstraction is dead and eternal; tired and endlessly engaging-a symphony of contradictions.

Jackson Berger makes Jackson works at Jackson’s House-Jackson Berger makes Jackson Berger paintings and Jackson Berger sculpture.

“Merz existed for a brief window in time, and lives on in our hearts.”-Maurice

Maurice
Feeding the People (Of Jackson’s House)
Pancakes, fried eggs, clementines, German hot sauce, Grand’s cinnamon rolls, orange juice, 4711 Cologne, and floral arrangement
Dimensions variable
2023

Portrait of Jackson Berger (Left) and Peter Eide (Right)

Installation view

Installation view

Jackson Berger
Merz
Found and repurposed ripped canvas, painted model magic, acrylic, oil stick, acrylic spray paint, various shirts, cardboard, wooden stretcher bars (18” x 24”), colored mylar, and paper towel
Dimensions variable
2023

Installation view

Installation view

Jackson Berger
Double Daddies (YELLOW)
Oil on panel
Each panel: 20” x 16”
2023

Installation view

Detail

Detail

Detail

Detail

Jackson Berger
Tyranny of Royal Farms
Acrylic and model magic on canvas
Approx. 32” x 24”
2023

Detail

Detail

Installation view

Jackson Berger
Untitled
Acrylic, oil stick, model magic, pancake, and repurposed painting panel on panel
48” x 36”
2023

Detail

Jackson Berger
Fried Eagle Mind
Acrylic spray paint, model magic, spray cans, plastic milk crate, painted facsimile skull, pancake, jars, sea sponges, and pancake
Dimensions variable
2023

Detail

Detail

Detail

Installation view

Jackson Berger
Clowny’s Destruction
Acrylic, spandex, oil stick, spray paint, plastic Jack-O-Lanterns, bubble wrap, wooden doorframe
Dimensions variable
2023

Detail

Installation view

Jackson Berger
Maurice (Redux)
Acrylic and Model Magic on panel
20” x 16” x 3.25”
2023

Detail

Installation view

Installation view

Installation view

Installation view

Jackson Berger
Untitled
Acrylic, oil, spray paint, spandex on modified wooden substrate
36” x 24”
2023

Detail

Detail

Detail

Jackson Berger
Entropic of Cancer
Acrylic, oil, spray paint, and spandex, canvas on wooden substrate
36” x 24”
2023

Detail

Detail

Detail

Jackson Berger
Untitled (Blue Imbue)
Acrylic, oil, spray paint, canvas, mylar, and staples on wooden substrate
48” x 36”
2023

Detail

Detail

Detail

Jackson Berger
Untitled (Island Came True)
Acrylic, oil, spray paint, refuse floral T-shirt, spandex on canvas mounted to wooden substrate
48” x 36
2023

Detail

Detail

Installation view

Jackson Berger
Untitled (Acid of Agent Orange)
Acrylic and oil stick on canvas
20” x 16”
2023

Detail

Detail