Artist Jack Pierson, whose works have reflected on queer themes and the relationship between life and art, has joined Lisson Gallery, which has spaces in New York, London, and Shanghai in addition to those expected to open this year in Beijing and Los Angeles.
Lisson currently represents a number of today’s top artists, including Marina Abramović, Ai Weiwei, Anish Kapoor, and Stanley Whitney.
Pierson’s latest representation will see him stay with his trio of current galleries, the blue-chip spaces Xavier Hufkens, Thaddaeus Ropac, and Regen Projects. But none of these galleries is based in New York, where Pierson lives, and Alex Logsdail, Lisson CEO, said he wanted to give the artist representation in the city.
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Pierson is a “New York–based artist who needed a good New York–based gallery,” Logsdail told ARTnews. “He needs a platform here.”
Over the past three decades, Pierson has created a body of work that defies easy classification, with pieces spanning text sculptures that spell out ironic aphorisms to photographs that are considered essential documents of queer communities throughout the 1980s.
Despite Pierson’s extensive cult following, he has not had a comprehensive U.S. survey since one in 2002 organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami. (There was, however, one devoted to his work from the ’90s at the Aspen Art Museum in 2017.) Because of this, it has mostly fallen on galleries, such as New York’s Cheim & Read, to offer Pierson some of his most important shows.
In 2021, Regen Projects staged what may be one of the most comprehensive shows of Pierson’s work in the U.S. to date. Logsdail said that seeing that show helped convince him to add Pierson to the Lisson roster. A Pierson show is on tap at the gallery for 2023.
“He’s an extremely complex artist that needs some contextualization and demonstration of his very diverse practice,” Logsdail said.