Over the course of six years, Patrick Jackson staged two exhibitions of his own work in his Los Angeles apartment complex. The first, House of Double, took place in 2012 in the vacant apartment next door to Jackson’s own; the space acted as a kind of architectural and domestic mirror, and included two nearly identical copies of Jackson himself. The second show, Dum Mud, happened in 2018 in Jackson’s own apartment, and consisted of ceramic shoes and wall reliefs. A conceptual continuity connects both shows, as well as a strong visual through line in the form of the burgundy carpeting, outdated fixtures, and desolate 1970s feel of the apartments themselves. This complex is a place where Patrick lives and works, but at the same time neither apartment is truly a place where he lives and works. One is simply next door, and the other—his actual apartment—has been cleaned beyond recognition, removed of any personal identification. Like the found objects in House of Double, the apartment in Dum Mud becomes the platonic version of a Los Angeles apartment. This book, House of Double and Dum Mud is a photographic record of these two shows and includes a lengthy interview between Jackson and Jamie Stevens of Artist Space.
Patrick Jackson was born in 1978 in Los Angeles. He earned his BFA at the San Francisco Art Institute and his MFA at the University of Southern California. Jackson works primarily as a sculptor, creating both discrete objects and immersive installations, occasionally altering the space of the museum/gallery to evoke eerie alternative environments that elicit psychoanalytic readings. In this manner his work considers the material nature of objects and architecture, the relationships of physical objects in space, and how viewers engage with and navigate an exhibition. His mixed-media environments possess a cinematic quality, akin to a stilled narrative. On multiple occasions Jackson has presented site-specific projects in his Los Angeles apartment complex, transforming his living space into exhibitions. Literature and theory are also central to his work; his projects are steeped in his cultural consumption. He outlines each of his exhibitions like a showrunner, pinning index cards to his studio wall, aggregating the language that informs his practice and subsequently piecing together texts and excerpts as source material and context. Jackson has had solo exhibitions at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2017); François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles (2016, 2013, 2008); and Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York (2010).