Jack Pierson

Jack Pierson

Jack Pierson is an American artist whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses photography, sculpture, drawing, painting and installation. Across these media, his work explores memory, desire, identity and the emotional residue of lived experience, often drawing on the visual language of cinema, literature, popular culture and personal mythology.

Pierson is particularly recognised for his photographic works, automatic drawings and sculptural assemblages composed from salvaged commercial signage. Through fragmented words, abstract forms and weathered surfaces, he transforms familiar materials into works charged with intimacy, nostalgia and psychological tension.

His practice moves between autobiography and abstraction, balancing visual immediacy with a persistent sense of absence, longing and impermanence.

Pierson’s work is represented in numerous public and private collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Selected exhibitions include Cheim & Read, New York; Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Image: Jack Pierson, self-portrait, 1992. Courtesy the artist.

Three Limited-Edition Works by Jack Pierson

For Henzel Studio, Jack Pierson has created three limited-edition hand-knotted rugs, translating elements from his drawings and abstract sculptures into tactile textile works.

The first design, Automatic Drawing, was introduced in 2013 and is adapted from one of Pierson’s automatic drawings. The immediacy of the original linework is preserved through variations in pile height, with the drawn strokes articulated in a lower pile to create depth and definition across the surface.

The collaboration expanded in 2018 with two additional works derived from Pierson’s abstract sculpture series. Untitled is based on Abstract #12, 2008, and takes the form of an irregular free-form composition. Variations of wool and silk create a deliberately worn, timeworn surface that recalls the patina of a vintage textile.

For Goin’ Home, Pierson reappropriated a component from his 2011 sculpture of the same name. Its interconnected forms are transformed into a sculptural free-form carpet, articulated through variable pile heights and an increased use of silk to intensify contrast, dimensionality and light.

Together, the three works extend Pierson’s exploration of gesture, fragmentation and found form into the material language of hand-knotted textiles.

Image: JACK PIERSON, Automatic Drawing, 2014 (detail)