Local artist's Dixon exhibit pokes fun, makes social commentaries

Jed Jackson’s paintings were made for these times.

As evidenced by “Toujours L’Audace,” Jackson’s solo exhibition at the Dixon Gallery through Nov. 16, the painter, and chairman of the art department at the University of Memphis, excels at satire, sly jabs and pithy social commentary.

Jackson’s paintings, which hang in the Mallory and Wurtzburger galleries, focus on a Gatsby-esque, albeit modern world where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots has widened to epic proportion. Scotch decanters and cigars are omnipresent in his work, which zeros in with a steady eye on the Starbucks culture, the Enron scandal and the grotesqueries of 21st century Las Vegas.

"Cotillion," by artist Jed Jackson.

Artist Jed Jackson's "Cafe 2002."

“Café 2002” shows a smug pair of metrosexuals flanked by a friend with a grizzled 5 o’clock shadow. All three are clad in modern Manhattan uniforms: black from head to toe, yet their foppery is 19th century in origin. Behind them, a mirror reflects drinkers from an earlier time, as Jackson pays tribute to — and pokes fun at — the would-be parallels between the Parisian bistro culture and the proliferation of $5 lattes, à la Starbucks, on 21st century American shores.

In “New World Order,” a Steve Buscemi type sits on a couch in a room littered with antiquities, a voluptuous blonde cougar perched beside him. The two study brochures of ancient Egypt, salivating at the prospect of a new gee-gaw or two. On the flipside, “Aides Memories” presents souvenirs as memories, rather than plundered objects.

“Paris/Las Vegas,” a segmented canvas painted in 2001, juxtaposes maps and images from World War I-era France with Vegas’ replica of the Eiffel Tower. It bristles with commentaries about politics, history and class.

Occasionally, Jackson explores Southern themes. His “Cotillion” (2004) depicts a trio of unlikely debutantes whose beautiful gowns and hair-dos hardly hide their tattoos and surly attitudes. “Midtown” (2000) divides the Memphis neighborhood into a series of images of wigs and portraits of the iconic neon signs outside Joe’s Liquor Store and Sun Studio. And “Relaxer” depicts more wigs, some startlingly realistic and others crudely rendered in a folk-art style.

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