Jack Pierson

b. 1960

Jack Pierson was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1984 where he participated in the Studio for Interrelated Media, one of the earliest formal academic programs for the study of performance art. He currently lives and works between New York and California.

Pierson’s work explores universal themes of desire, memory, loss, and the passage of time. His photography, sculpture, drawing, painting, films, books, and installations express emotional narratives and ways of being in the world. Often associated with a generation of photographers who challenged the boundaries of the medium – Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, and Mark Morrisroe, among others – Pierson likewise came to prominence in the early 1990s with his intimate portrayals of everyday queer life and bohemian culture in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Provincetown, and Miami Beach.

Pierson’s work is found in major public collections, including Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; CAPC Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, USA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY USA, and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, USA.

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