By John Owoo
(In Accra – Ghana)
An exhibition of serigraphic prints with muted tones by Isaac Ato Jackson – that reveal how images recreate and swing between different digital structures – is currently underway at the Museum of Science and Technology in Accra.
Inspired by an incessant observation of kiosks in sprawling Zongo communities in Accra New Town, Alajo, Adabraka (Accra) and Ayigya in Kumasi, he simulates images from these scenes alongside human figures and vividly presents them on huge materials.
Through the medium of painting, drawing and silkscreen printing, Jackson creates striking images that explore notions of occupation, translation and its residues of lost, erasure and the abstraction of identity, humans and spaces.
Jackson further generates a facsimile in these neighborhoods, which are characterized by landscapes of weather-beaten painted walls and disintegrating cement through a careful use of matte acrylics while subjectively mixing residual paint to create accidentals.
Titled “Not Wrapped In Cellophane”, the artist zoomed in on cracking and peeling paint while ensuring that his opaque colors end up terminating as transparent ones. Indeed, his inability to iron plastic surfaces is clearly revealed owing to complications resulting from the flattening process.
In some works, Jackson relocates images onto loose polythene while employing hot irons to cajole the acrylics into adhering to smooth and nonporous plastic while exposing unmerged layers of tones on the exterior.
The show equally offers images of the multiple stages of his work process including the printing of screens and marking out both negative and positive spaces. Indeed, these have effectively been re-configured into light boxes while artificial digital gadgets lie on the floor or hang loosely from the ceiling.
Currently an MFA student in Painting at the College of Art and Built Environment, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Kumasi), Jackson has participated in exhibitions at the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art(Tamale, Ghana) and Galerie Wedding (Berlin, Germany).
Goethe-Institut Ghana supported the exhibition, which is being curated by Abbey IT – A. It ends on Tuesday January 31, 2022.
