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Fuck The Usa

Jo Jackson Notices the Negative

Title: Fucking America
Artist: Jo Jackson
Galleries: Jack Hanley, New Image Arts
Media: Gouache and housepaint on wood
Price: Already been sold

San Francisco artist Jo Jackson makes super-super-flat paintings using her favorite material, Holbein acrylic gouache. “I like it because it’s disaster-prone, and also they make the most beautiful colors,” she says.

Nothing looks accidental or out of place in Jo’s paintings, though. They are strong and deliberate, and they burn with hot, hot colors.

This piece was made because Jo was “tripping on the fact that the shape of the main USA landmass has the same negative presence as a silhouette of a fascist eagle or a gun.”

There is also a straight-up sex influence in this work, so don’t worry—it isn’t all cerebral. Jo reports, “I was looking a lot at this 1950s book called Man and Wife. It has all these pictures of sexy but spaced-out and bored people having fake, socially sanctioned sex. From all the positions in the book, this one––where they’re standing and he’s looking at her and she’s looking out into the future––became the only one I could ever draw.”

VICE STAFF