Oliver Lee Jackson in conversation with Ekow Eshun at Lisson Gallery London

29 April 2025

On 5 April 2025, Oliver Lee Jackson was in conversation with author and curator Ekow Eshun at Lisson Gallery London to celebrate 'Intimacies', his first ever solo show in London.

For his inaugural exhibition with Lisson Gallery, Oliver Lee Jackson presents a selection of new paintings produced over the past year. The American artist, based in Oakland, California, creates energetic fields of abstract marks that occasionally coalesce into floating forms approaching figuration. These ‘paint people’ can be glimpsed in groups or as individuals in various poses – crouched, huddled, seated, perhaps even flying – appearing in either very few brushstrokes or as indicators of spatial dynamics, sometimes accompanied by flowers, birds, hats or shoes.

While Jackson does indeed consider himself a figurative artist, his unique painted worlds only open up through an appreciation of the full plethora of marks he commits to each panel. Human forms mingle and merge in shimmering, skittering lines that hint both at the movement and the volume of these figures, while often comprising more or less than their prescribed number of arms or legs, with some forms shifting across planes and seemingly sliding away from view and beyond our focus. Between these groupings of figures are expanses of primed surface, punctuated by swathes of abstract gesture and bold colouration that pull these scenes beyond mere image, into zones of feeling, expression and intent.

'Intimacies' is on view through 17 May 2025.

Film by Emily Lavarello Ethic Co Photography.