Ackermann/Jackson.
Danilowicz, Nathan
Otero Plassart | Los Angeles, California
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Otero Plassart's Franz Ackermann and Richard Jackson pairing
(through April 18), the gallery's third show, plays off painting
and actionism in an attempt to expand and intersect these increasingly
related genres. Comprised of four large works, the artists' adroit
use of space serves them better than the gallery's previous two
group shows, which tended to crowd the room. This is fortunate because,
aside from a few museum surveys, we haven't seen much of Ackermann
and Jackson on the West Coast lately. A California native,
Jackson's last major show in Los Angeles occurred nearly a decade
ago, in LACMA's "Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity,
1900-2000," while Berlin-based Ackermann's most recent
appearance was in MOCA's "Ecstasy: In and About Altered
States" from 2005.
The centerpiece of this setting is Jackson's The Kids'
Table (all work 2009), an attractive sculptural installation involving a
set of built-in, one-time-use contraptions that deliver painterly
patterns in random order. Essentially an IKEA-esque dining room set
resting on an over-sized wooden puzzle shaped in part like a
painter's palette, each of the table's four place settings
includes a metal spray-paint apparatus and a hose trailing up through a
twisted neon chandelier to a huge, down-facing mirror, which reflects
the mayhem that has gone on below. The other three works,
Ackermann's Your City is Almost Mine, Your City is Really Almost
Mine, and Your Cities are Almost Mine, are painted directly on the
walls, with additional small paintings and oddly shaped cutouts
incorporating photography as well as drawing. The intricate weaving
together of Ackermann's maps and travel routes becomes ever more
condensed relative to the scale of the surface involved. In effect,
these smaller units collapse the larger continental divides and
imaginary locales not unlike the reflecting pool hovering above
Jackson's table, tracing the developing psychologies of the now
missing kids' formative years.
The principal behind this pairing, the brainchild of organizer
Chris Beas, is based in part on the question of when exactly the act of
painting begins (in Ackermann's case via his geographical and urban
journeys) or ends (in Jackson's when he throws the switch on his
devices). On the other hand, it could be that Ackermann's work is
meant to frame the room that houses Jackson's, and that
Jackson's in turn offers the former's dizzying meanderings a
momentary anchor (at least while the kids are away). The result is a
seductive tableau of converging, Crayola-colored squiggles with just
enough white space between the pieces to suggest a nearly finished
jigsaw puzzle. If it weren't for the odd blank spot, as when
Ackermann chose not to paint over light switches, electrical outlets,
and ventilation grills, the viewer might well be tempted to connect the
dots of this double bill, instead of focusing on their independent
actions.
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What may not be so obvious is how this lark of a show might operate
in a city where cartoon fabrication, confused freeways, and spills made
by trust fund kids are not an everyday phenomenon. Across the pond,
however, both artists seem in their element. Ackermann is featured in
Tate Britain's 2009 Triennial, "Altmodern," and two of
Jackson's "painting rooms," The Laundry Room (2009) and
The Upside Down Room (1991), appeared at Hauser & Wirth Zurich
through last May. Taking action painting to its extreme, Jackson and
Ackermann truly form a happening pair.
