Page 4 -  Conversation: Julian Jackson .... / April

JJ:  Right, but also during this period, the late 90s, was a time just after the market was down and depressed which I think resulted in a lot conceptual and installation work; just about everything but painting. I remember - the 96th Whitney Biennial, I think it was - someone was handing out buttons that said, �Where�s the Paint?� or something to that effect.

JW: (Laughs) Right!

JJ: There were no painters being represented. So, one of the reasons we started the gallery was to address what we saw as the lack of opportunities for painters.  We set it as one of our goals to fill that vacuum. We started off the first couple of shows exhibiting people we knew but then the circle has grown from that point.

JW: But that makes perfect sense.  You would show your friend�s work first because that�s what you�d know best.  And a lot of this business has to do with relationships.

JJ: Very much so.

JW: The reason I ask about painting picking up again is because when I first began my journal my intent was to write reviews every week devoted to abstract art and frankly I had some doubts as to whether I would have enough content. But in the past 5 years I�ve not yet found myself without something worthwhile to write about regarding abstract art. This covers approximately the same period in which you�ve been running your gallery.

JJ: Yeah, yeah, painting really seems to have returned as a viable medium again, which I�m happy about.  I�m not sure what it is that drives a cycle like that but I�m glad that painting has resumed its place along with a whole list of approaches that are equally important. Thankfully we are in a very pluralistic moment.  A lot of people decry this saying, oh you know, there�s not a lot of focus in the art world.  But I think it�s a good thing because, just as there are many cuisines, there are many kinds of art making and so many different tastes to address.

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Metaphor Contemporary Art - Main Gallery (from above) featuring the work of Mary Judge

JW: You know, I�m really glad to hear you say that because I feel precisely the same way.  When I got here in the mid-80s when the East Village was going full tilt and if you were making abstract painting it was, like, forget it.

JJ: Well I lived down there in the East Village and I felt like an old gray-beard even though I was the same age as everyone else working there at the time. But I just didn�t connect with a lot of the funky sort of stuff that was going on then.

JW: Abstract artists were marginalized by that whole scene. As you say, it�s true that a lot of people may not like the pluralism today. But at least there is not one group dominating the golden ring on the merry-go-round anymore.  I like that these other mediums and approaches haven�t gone away either, like conceptual art, installations and video and yet there�s room for painting too.

JJ: And I find that work equally interesting and inspiring as painting. The best of it is always challenging but having been a painter for over 25  years now, I�m very committed to the activity of painting and its history. It is analogous to writing music or poetry where you start with nothing and then from your own sensibility you bring something to the piece you�re working on.  That�s a real challenge I think.

JW: Do you think that�s truer of abstract painting?

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