Richard Jacksons 5050 Stacked Paintings is a collection of 5050 individual acrylic paintings which has taken 33 years to complete. Each canvas has been stacked face down ranging from a single canvas up to in its centre 100 canvases with only the edges of the canvases. each canvas is an individual painting, the individual subject of the painting is not shown to the viewer creating a mystery as to what the canvas shows. the only clues being the brightly coloured paints seeping out between the gaps of the canvases. The paints have another purpose to the work as they act as glue to the entire piece. there are at least two gloves of which the fingers have been covered in a variety of different paint colours in the work that are trapped between the canvases together with the paint seeping out makes the work seem spontaneous although in reality the works have been carefully planned to make it look spontaneous by the artist. with the only exception being the limited control of the paint seeping out as it is hard to predict the exact flow of the paint although this has been carefully considered.
Jackson constructing 5050 stacked painting
The canvases are the work not just a surface to be painted on but has come off the wall becoming a sculpture using the postmodern perspective of giving an alternate users for the material. Jackson also uses this idea with the paint not only using it for its aesthetic purpose but to use it as an alternate constructive glue between the canvases.
This installation is experienced rather than just looked at unlike a traditional painted canvas on a wall. the scale and layout immerses the viewer as they walk around and within it.
The gradual build up invites the viewer to walk inside the towers of canvases that are laid out creating a spiralling narrow path creating a sense of an overpowering wall of colour, it becomes more immersive as the height of the towers increase until the viewer further into the spiral finds himself fully immersed in a circular room created using the canvases. Here Jackson is using the postmodern ideology of viewer interaction.
The inspiration for Jackson on this work is the idea that artists get into repetition when they find a their particular style resulting in the artists repeating this single idea a thousand times. Jackson is reacting to this type of artists behaviour by constantly repeating the painting and stacking them thousands of times.
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