Marcelle Joseph Projects proudly presents Rough Cut and Faceted, a solo exhibition of new work by British artist Vanessa Jackson. Jackson's work employs geometry, determined by the experience of architecture, art history and dance, to animate the contradiction of desiring three-dimensional space in the flatness of modernist painting. Her optical play of saturated colour and light explores the possibility of fully realized space at once pertaining to logic and completeness with that of uncertainty and unease. With no overt desire for self-expression or narrative, Jackson has firmly rooted her paintings in the present, creating a space for the viewer to dwell, both physically and psychologically, within the confines of the canvas. The seductiveness of these new works by Vanessa Jackson draw the viewer in, offering an immersive experience as well as a space for reflection.
After 35 years of regular teaching, mentoring many of today's artists, Jackson has quit academe to concentrate all her energy into the studio. Now harking back to Jackson's own undergraduate dissertation, she used a Wittgenstein quotation as its title, which encapsulates Jackson's abstract practice.
'What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language. What can be shown, cannot be said.'
