Images Jesse and Jason Pearson
A Solo Show by Dick and Wayne
twin brothers
Jesse and Jason Pearson
Please Join us Friday April 2nd, 2021
from 5-7pm for an opening reception and an artist talk at 5pm
The artist will be in attendance
Foto Forum Santa Fe, 1714 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Free to the public
essay by Charlotte Cotton
Jason Pearson, in collaboration with his twin brother Jesse, has been creating a cache of photographic imagery. They construct a visual language of shared memories, notes, and proclamations that collectively provide an idiosyncratic glimpse into their shared histories and experiences. Their photographs act as a set of codes and signifiers of imagined events, games and desires. There are images re-enacting childhood memories, sometimes composed with the reference to the conventions of family photographs. Other photographs are documents of scenarios that the brothers and their collaborators stage, using masks and other graphic props that confuse the two-and three-dimensional spaces of the photographic image, encouraging the viewer to try to image what is taking place in these psychologically charged scenes… Collectively, these different photographic image-types create a subjective but real and tangible sense of the Pearsons’ relationship with the external world.
Authorship of the Pearsons’ work is displaced because of the way they photograph, collage, and layout photographic imagery without a consistent ‘signature style’ - their own photographs and those they find to use have equivalent value of the overall scheme of their practice. Of course, that ambiguity is doubled by the fluidity of authorship between the two brothers, and the fluctuating division of labour between them, in each edition to their photographic collaboration. Concomitantly, the Pearsons’ practice reflects the contemporary trajectory of a much more sophisticated use of photographic style which emerged in the late 1970s, whereby artists were deploying photographic language as a tool rather than the more romantic Modernist idea as photography as a direct outputting of an artist’s unique vision. But what is distinct to the current moment of photo practice, to which the Pearsons consciously align their practice, is the way that we currently use photographic imagery in social media and in the course of our daily lives. The Pearsons shift the authorship of their practice away from the photographs, per se, and towards the visual ‘phrases’ that can be made from the combining of sequencing of imagery. Their photographs are authentic expressions, crafted so that we can enter into the creative and psychological space that Pearsons have created.
Bio
Jason and Jesse Pearson (DickandWayne)
Twin brothers’ Jason and Jesse Pearson working under the moniker - Dick and Wayne were born in rural Minnesota, dropped in a violent blizzard in January of 1980. Both brothers received BFA degrees in Photography from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2002. Jesse received an MFA from The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque in 2006 and Jason an MFA from Syracuse University, New York in 2007. Collectively and separately they have received numerous awards, fellowships, travels grants and residencies, some of which include
Finlandia Foundation National Project, Arteles Residency Program, Finland, McKnight Foundation Photography Fellowship, Light Work, Jerome Foundation, Travel and Research Grant(s), Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Anderson Ranch Arts Center Residency.
Their first book “No Kissing” is available at Photo-Eye Bookstore in Santa Fe, New Mexico with a forthcoming book set to be released in 2022 “A Survey of the End-Travels with my Twin”.
The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Jason who passed away in 2020.
“We’ll meet again someday on the avenue…”
-Bob Dylan