Patrick Jackson’s two life-size, realistic human figures lie supine on the floor of two separate galleries in the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The figures are long-haired, long-bearded white men dressed in short denim jackets and jeans (a.k.a., the jokingly, slangy, mildly derisive “Canadian tuxedo”).
They lie with their eyes shut and hands clasped across their bellies, as if napping. On closer inspection the vibe is less like they’re asleep and more like they’re lying in state at a funeral memorial service. At first glance, viewers may think these are real people, actor-models, or the artist himself, staging a performance, but these are convincing mannequins as sculptural objects in an art installation (thankfully) plainly titled “Heads, Hands, and Feet.”
It’s on view as part of an exhibition of selected works from the Hammer’s permanent collection of contemporary art called “Together in Time.” The show occupies the largest of the museum’s eight or so galleries.
In a clever twist, Jackson’s duo of mannequins have been split up, with one in the show’s main exhibition gallery and the other placed on the other side of the museum in a gallery unrelated to the show, a quieter, smaller space permanently devoted to the Hammer’s concise, but world-class collection of traditional European paintings dating back hundreds of years.
There’s a pointed contrast being made here with this placement of these mannequins and the artwork itself. Jackson’s work is juxtaposing the contemporary with the early-modern and classical antiquity.
These long-haired, “denimed” men could easily be mistaken for stereotypical hipster-musicians from Bushwick or Echo Park, straight out of Central Casting, but Jackson is drawing attention to classical sculptural qualities in the hands and feet that seem like a nod to legacy, to Renaissance Italy, and Michaelangelo’s “David.”
The feet are exquisitely rendered, as if in oyster-hued marble. But the hands are made in un-human colors, shiny of surface, boldly, unnervingly lacquer-like in primary red and charcoal. The effect is humane, yet uncanny and jolting.
GLOBAL GRAPHICA 