Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing

Floor 6

Born 1944 in St. Louis, MO
Lives in Savannah, GA

Suzanne Jackson made these suspended paintings without canvas, slowly building up many layers of acrylic, detritus, gel medium, and objects from the natural world, including seeds from her garden in Savannah, Georgia. Jackson has been experimenting with acrylic paint since the 1960s. “It’s painting another way,” she explains. “I don’t call it collage because it’s not another material. It’s all paint—acrylic on acrylic. And it’s suspended: paint suspended in space. . . . The paint becomes an armature for itself.” This “armature” is not fixed, however; Jackson thinks of the paintings as living things and is very open to the fact that they are malleable and will reshape. The layered paint seems to have a kind of agency and an ability to change independently. Looking at its iridescent quality up close creates an afterimage—a lasting mental image that continues even when a viewer has shifted their gaze away.