Jack Pierson Spoofs Hollywood Bombast in His Show at Regen Projects

Comments (0) By Catherine Wagley Thursday, Jan 10 2013

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"People gravitate toward symbols," Pierson says. "But I also don't feel like it's my deal to [analyze] that. I'm not a graduate-school artist. I just depend on it working somehow."

"End of the World" will be Pierson's first show in the new Regen Projects gallery, which in September opened off the corner of Highland and Santa Monica.

PHOTO AND ART DIRECTION BY TIM PALEN; COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND REGEN PROJECTS

Not your typical art-show poster

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The cavernous main exhibition space intimidated him at first, and he wasn't sure he'd be able to fill it in time for a January show.

But a friend uses that phrase all the time — "It's not the end of the world" — and Pierson likes the way it sounds. It tries to tamp down on overreactions by being slightly hyperbolic itself.

So when Pierson thought, of the Regen show, "I'll do it and it's not the end of the world," he realized he had a plan. He would have letters fabricated specially — huge, flashy ones that stood 14 feet tall, just shy of the 15-foot ceiling. They'd spell out "End of the World," and would be, as his press release suggests, "his biggest-budget disaster spectacle to date."

When I spoke with him the last week of December, he had only a vague idea of what the letters would look like in the space.

"If it looks dumb and brilliant on its own, I'll leave it," without adding anything else, he says, though he planned to bring with him a collection of photographs — mostly images of other printed ephemera, like photos of books and letter and other photographs — in case he needs them.

Lately, he says, he's been working like that: making instinctive decisions and following through on whatever idea he has, as long it's something he imagines he'll still want to look at and won't mind having his name associated with after the project is done. "It's like a message to the one other chic person in the world who shares my taste."

JACK PIERSON | Regen Projects | 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd. | Jan. 12-Feb. 16 | regenprojects.com