Mark Jackson is an artist based in London, England. His work considers themes of subjectivity and  authorship, exploring how these concepts intersect with shifts in the technological, philosophical  and cultural landscape. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘psychic surface’ at Castor Gallery (2024)  and ‘turtles all the way down’ at OHSH Projects (2023). In 2024, Jackson was featured in group  exhibitions across New York, Los Angeles, Leipzig, London, and Burgundy. In addition to his artistic  practice, Jackson teaches and writes. His recent writing projects include an interview with Richard  Aldrich (2024) and an article on Rita Ackermann (2021), both for Turps Magazine. 

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Faces, torsos, hands, and feet emerge, as if through impressionistic mist, their features dissolving  back into the layered, translucent mesh of fragmented and abstracted paint gestures. There’s a  wide range of painting techniques, layered over each other, creating a complex visual field, one  that attends to the apparent random nature of thought itself. 

I’m interested in how paintings can not only be made by people, but be like people — How an  image can be ultimately unknowable, have the psychological depth, contradiction, the beauty and  perhaps the misdirection of the human subject that created it. With such a view I’m staking a claim  for art as an extension of ourselves — one that truly extends our consciousness into further  territory, and extends our conceptual and dialogical capacities. 

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To this end it can be said that my work is about selfhood, and in particular, the fragility of selfhood  and authorship. Sometimes these themes are explicitly present, whilst at other times they quietly  permeate the image, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty. In early collaborative projects  (Jackson Webb 2003 - 2010), I explored how two artists can generate a “third mind” — a shared,  uncontrollable author. Since then, my investigations into authorship have continued through  painting, where I often defer to material and image experimentation to introduce a sense of  otherness. These strategies are influenced by Surrealist methods, allowing space for the  unforeseeable to guide the process. During their making, my paintings become a space for  capturing the shifting nature of subjectivity. Rather than projecting a singular, fixed vision, I view my  work almost like a net that entangles a fluid, evolving self over an extended period of time. 

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In the work, a fracturing or unfixed self is often manifest through representational elements  embedded within more abstract fields of mark-making. The studio acts as a vast repository in  which colour swatches, sketches, fabrics, reflective materials, offcuts from discarded paintings,  dust and detritus circulate around my canvases. Sometimes I’ll pin these objects to paintings to  create a surprise (for myself). Sometimes they become part of the work, and at other times they  are copied quite faithfully in oil paint, often to then be worked over again. 

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The question of selfhood feels particularly pertinent in today's climate, where individualism is  simultaneously exalted as an ideal and undermined by contradictory forces, reducing individuals to  consumers, turning personal identity into something transactional. The self is both idealised and  fractured. Ultimately, my works explore the precariousness of selfhood in relation to technology, the  environment, and philosophical ideas.