VIDEO: Matthew Day Jackson in Conversation with Jaeyong Park

This film captures a spirited conversation between Matthew Day Jackson and Jaeyong Park—a curator based in Seoul—during a walkthrough of the artist’s exhibition “Counter-Earth” at our arts complex in the Korean capital. Marking Jackson’s first-ever solo show in Seoul, “Counter-Earth,” on view through August 19, features otherworldly landscape and seascape paintings created by the artist this year. Here, Jackson discusses the art historical references, thematic concerns, and material nuances in his new landscapes, delving into their conceptual and technical underpinnings. For his latest body of work, Jackson has drawn inspiration from 19th century landscape painting and photography— including works by Caspar David Friedrich, Albert Bierstadt, and Eadweard Muybridge—along with the conventions of landscape in science fiction, where the strange and familiar converge. He created the paintings on view in the exhibition through combinations of physical and digital modes of making, bringing issues of materiality and form to the fore of his compositions. To produce these new paintings, the artist uses a semi-autonomous laser process that imbues his works with an uncanny feel. Layering images sourced from landscape photography and painting as well as everyday scenes he has captured on his iPhone, Jackson invites questions of medium, material, and meaning that are only answered through sustained consideration and interrogation.

 

Matthew Day Jackson in Conversation with Jaeyong Park