I spoke to Jameson Green just before Christmas last year and it was a conversation I never wanted to end. There was a re-examination of life going on, maybe for both of us, but definitely for Jamerson, who moved out of the city, took a year off of exhibition, built a studio in upstate New York and just got to work. And getting to work, and his sage wisdom in making it, culminated in his new solo show, Look back, and smile on perils past, on view at Almine Rech in Paris (and nearly a year after our interview,)
When I asked Jameson about just taking a second to catch up with himself, to make work without pressure and yet an ultimate goal in mind, he told me “There’s a benefit to this, because within that time of slowing down and changing my studio schedule, you really just started to create this. What is it called? Essentially, you create this space for your work to be able to grow without any necessarily outside pressure, you know? And you’re not putting a time constraint on it. So I’m looking at it a bit differently. And I mean, I’ve always tried to reinvent myself every time things start to get a little stagnant; it’s just part of how I think. And by stagnant, I mean, if I know how I’m going to approach it, that bothers me. So I’m thinking now, ‘All right, I can’t keep doing it this way. Because I understand this, I need to be able to bring in more elements that I don’t really know how to juggle’.”
Where the new show, Look back, and smile on perils past, continues to explore for Green is art history and his physical self within it. The works are odes to heroes of art history’s lexicon but also Green grappling with how he sees himself in their vision. The works are dense, homages but also entirely of his own. —Evan Pricco
