Gallery Jeeum is pleased to present CANALS, our first exhibition with Tyler Jackson Pritchard showcasing the artist’s latest series of 11 works. This series of paintings from 2020 explores how two seemingly contradictory forces work in tandem. Humans and the natural world are often depicted as opposing forces whereas Jackson takes a different point of view, seeing them as partners in a dance. Complementary to one another. Not a dissonance but a harmony.
Canals is the most fitting analogy denoting the relationship between the workings of nature and that of our society. The natural and the human world, to the artist, are one in the same, both expressions of organic energy, not antithesis. Just as how a river flows through canals built by humans, the same force runs through our organically built bodies. This channel of momentum is the main guiding principle of the works. We labour as part of and evolve along with the happenings in nature, not in opposition or in battle.
We see this communicated not just in the content of the works but also in the techniques used to make them. Flat, rigid and almost dry application of paint is placed within the same canvas as thick, three dimensional, highly textured carved acrylic applied through a wet and flowing process. The sculpture-like texture created by generous swaths of paint that are then carved are a depiction of Jackson’s unbounded emotional expressions while the almost matter-of-fact straight lines elude to an air of calm rationality. The emotional juxtaposition involved in the creation process parallels the coexistence of the organic reaction and measured construction.
Each of Jackson’s works he sees as an individual, created with full personality and purpose including both darkness and light. Photography and music from heavy metal to classical have played important roles in Jackson’s life. His paintings are the combination of the captured moment expressed in visual rhythm.
While darkness and the ‘Jungian Shadow’ have always been elements in his artistic practices; “darkness reveals light” as he says, and vice versa; we see a more daring use of bright and joyous colours seemingly to illustrate blossoming plants and flowers that are then counter balanced with the use of uniform lines. But is what you see with the naked eye genuinely all of it? What images and objects do you really see between the lines?
Jackson also reflected upon his unintentional tendency to create works in pairs or more. Good Morning, Good Afternoon and Good Night form a story-like trio and in the pair The In Between and Ghost of the Present we see reminiscent advancements from his previous series focusing on liner optics. In Blood Ivory and Jodorowsky‘s Wounds we see the artist pushing geometric order and controlled chaos past the content of the paintings into even the shape and construction of the canvas.
About Tyler Jackson Pritchard
Tyler Jackson Pritchard (formerly known as KRÜTZ SīVÆL) is a multidisciplinary artist focusing in painting, photography and sculpture. The central intention of his paintings are to bypass representation and get straight to the emotional, symbolic, and hidden qualities that lay behind his subjects. His work gives form to the communion of our inner and outer landscapes. Showing not just what something looks like but also how it feels, smells, sounds, behaves and effects us resulting in images that appear as though epiphanies resurrected from a dream.
Jackson’s paintings teem with a raw yet reserved energy. His diversity of subject matter, genres, and techniques parallels the numerous and complex subjects he explores. There is an underlying theme of juxtaposition throughout his work, blending and unifying seemingly opposing forces such as order and chaos, spiritual and material, raw and refined. He uses his most recognizable motif of a single continuously intersecting line as a visual language, expressing a full range of tonality and emotion.
He was born and spent his early life in America and later moved to Asia where he thoroughly immersed himself into the culture. This is why we see a blend of East and West in his concepts, style, technique and use of materials.
Around the same time as he moved to Asia, he embarked on an ongoing project of photographing secret and violent religious ceremonies across the world on 120mm and 35mm film. These experiences of seeing things like animal sacrifices, human possession, self mutilation and miracles performed, are what shaped the intensity we see in his paintings and the deep and profound meanings they hold.
For purchase inquiries, please contact us at hailey.shin@jeeumgallery.com
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For more on Tyler Jackson Pritchard visit www.tylerjackson.com or @tylerjcksn on instagram
Ghost Of The Present 2020
Acrylic on Canvas
92 x 92cm | 36 x 36in
The In Between 2020
Acrylic on Canvas
92 x 92cm | 36 x 36in
Good Morning 2020
Acrylic on Canvas
46 x 61cm | 18 x 24in
Good Night 2020
Acrylic on Canvas
46 x 61cm | 18 x 24in
Good Afternoon 2020
Acrylic, Graphite on Canvas 75 x 60cm | 30 x 24in
Worm Food 2020
Acrylic on Canvas 75 x 60m | 30 x 24in
Blood Ivory 2020
Acrylic on Canvas 80 x 120cm | 32 x 47in
Jodorowsky’s Wounds 2020
Acrylic, Graphite on Canvas 120 x 90cm | 47 x 36in
House of Woodcock 2020
Acrylic, Chalk on Aged-Paper Wrapped Canvas 120 x 80cm | 47 x 32in
Caesar 2020
Acrylic on Natural Canvas 70 x 80cm | 28 x 32in
Exhibition Highlights
