Rena Bransten Gallery is pleased to present a selection of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from celebrated artist Oliver Lee Jackson. The works on view span decades, and exemplify Jackson’s breadth of material mastery and expansive, nuanced visual language.
Jackson’s work incorporates a multitude of effects rooted in this world, while inviting viewers to open their eyes to other realms. Though rarely referencing specific events, spirituality and human connection pulse vibrantly throughout the works. His images and forms, both in abstraction and figuration, create a sense of volume that engulfs the senses – the longer time spent looking, the more one can attune to Jackson’s visual world.
This year Rena Bransten Gallery celebrates our 50th year in business. Enduring, long-term relationships with artists, collectors, and curators is one of the tenets of the Gallery’s long history. Rena Bransten first exhibited Jackson’s work in 1982 at what was then the Quay Gallery, located at 254 Sutter Street in San Francisco. It has been our great pleasure to witness Jackson’s staggeringly prolific and powerful work unfold over the years, and it continues to challenge and entice.
Born in 1935 in Saint Louis, Missouri, Oliver Lee Jackson has exhibited extensively, and his work can be found in the permanent collections of The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Contemporary Art Museum, Chicago; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Blanton Museum, University of Texas at Austin; Seattle Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; The Oakland Museum of California; San Jose Museum of Art, and many other public and private collections in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. In 2023 he received the Lee Krasner Award for lifetime achievement from the Pollock Krasner Foundation. Since 1982 Oliver Jackson’s studio has been in Oakland, California.