Jack Pierson

Work

Pierson's practice embodies an array of media spanning from wall-drawings, word-pieces, installations, drawings, paintings and photographs. He is considered to be part of a group of photographers known as the Boston School -- David Armstrong, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Nan Goldin, Mark Morrisroe and twins Doug and Mike Starn, among others. All of them knew one another in the early 1980s and photographed their immediate circle of friends in situations that were, or appeared to be, casual or intimate.

Pierson first began making his Word Sculptures in 1991, utilizing found objects – mismatched letters salvaged from junkyards, old movie marquees, roadside diners, Las Vegas casinos, and other forsaken enterprises. The word sculptures create individual words or phrases that evoke a multiplicity of meanings.

Commissioned in 1997 by the artistic collective Bernadette Corporation, Pierson's video Past Life in Egypt is a collaboration with Ursula Hodel, who plays an outrageous and glamorous dominatrix in the video. At one point, her character sadly recounts her past life as a wicked queen of Egypt, in love with a much younger man and impervious to the suffering of her people. The narrative is at times humorous, sensational and spectacular, but is ultimately grounded in the haze of past memories and the regrets of a past life.

In 2003, Pierson published Self Portrait, a book of photographs by features 15 images of beautiful men, arranged to suggest the arc of a lifetime—beginning with a young boy and progressing to old age with men in various stages of undress; none of the images is of the artist himself.

In 2006, inspired by an earlier series of pencil drawings he did from an old postcard of a woman's face, Pierson produced a suite of twelve large-scale silkscreen paintings, all linearly graphic in black ink on diffused, off-white linen. Removed from its original and singular representation in a photograph, the portrayed woman's facade is variously multiplied by hand and then enlarged by the machine-like reproduction of silkscreen.

In a group of what Pierson refers to as "first page drawings", original texts from various female authors, already multiplied by machine to the printed word, are returned to the realm of the singular and hand written original. Pierson diligently copies the first page of books-penned by Barbara Pym, Jean Rhys, Sister Wendy and Marilyn Monroe, among others-on 11 x 14 inch paper.

Other projects

Pierson's work is regularly commissioned for magazines and he has undertaken photography projects for several luxury fashion houses. Commissioned by the Italian luxury label Bottega Veneta, he photographed models Liya Kebede, Karmen Pedaru and Alexandre Cunha for the men and women’s 2012 spring/summer ad campaign along Coconut Grove, Florida.

For the project The Source, artist Doug Aitken filmed a conversation with Pierson, exploring the essence of his creative process.

Private life

Pierson is openly gay. He was a boyfriend of famous American photographer Mark Morrisroe at the time Morrisroe lived in Boston.

Collective exhibitions

•2009: "Ca me touche", les invités de Nan Goldin, at Les Rencontres d'Arles festival, France.