Less and more

A concise introduction to the work of New York artist and photographer Jack Pierson, including photographs, collages, word sculptures, and more, across four decades.

Published on the occasion of the tenth solo presentation of Pierson’s work with Regen Projects, Los Angeles, this full-color publication illustrates works produced over 35 years of the artist’s multidisciplinary practice. Organized as a poetic, anti-chronological and accomplished installation that follows Jack Pierson’s diverse yet idiosyncratic œuvre, the exhibition and publication offer a singular journey through the artist’s career. With a new contribution by Evan Moffitt that examines the artist’s work in relation to the queer cultural epics of the 1990s, a conversation between the artist and Andy Campbell, and an essay by Bruce Benderson, Less and more sheds unprecedented light on Pierson’s work.

Published following the eponymous exhibition at Regen Projects Gallery, Los Angeles, in 2021.

While studying at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, Jack Pierson (born 1960 in Plymouth, lives and works in New York and Southern California) formed the so-called “Boston Five” with other photographic artists, including Nan Goldin. He has adopted a trans-disciplinary approach that spans a wide range of techniques, from photography to installation, wall art, painting, sculpture, lettering and drawing. His photographs have often been compared to the shots of a road movie, his words to travel notes in the pursuit of happiness in American culture. The subjects he prefers all belong to the everyday life of a contemporary artist: fragments of urban landscapes, still lifes with ordinary objects, nudes strongly marked by homosexual eroticism, evocative words elaborated in collages or represented in neon. Far from wanting to decline the fixed formulas of American dream imagery, however, the artist focuses on their emotional reverse, on what he calls “the drama inherent in the search for glamour”.