Matthew Day Jackson USA, b. 1974

Matthew Day Jackson (b. 1974, Panorama City, California) is an American artist whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, video, performance and installation. Through an expansive engagement with art history, science, technology and American culture, Jackson examines the complex relationship between human progress and destruction.

Central to Jackson’s practice is an interest in the myths and contradictions that have shaped modern society, from space exploration and technological innovation to warfare, industrialisation and the American frontier. His work frequently brings together seemingly disparate historical and cultural references, considering how inherited narratives continue to inform the present.

Material and process play a fundamental role in Jackson’s work. Combining traditional craft with advanced fabrication techniques, he works with materials ranging from wood, bronze and lead to Formica, plastics and industrial composites. Their cultural and historical associations become integral to the meaning of the works, often collapsing distinctions between the natural and artificial, the heroic and catastrophic, and creation and decay.

Jackson describes this coexistence of beauty and horror as the “Horriful”—an idea that runs throughout his practice and reflects his sustained investigation into humanity’s capacity to create and destroy. Across his work, histories of exploration, innovation and aspiration are therefore inseparable from questions of mortality, violence and environmental consequence.