The book «Blackboard» is based on a series of works by Lucas Jardin, a French artist living in Brussels, which were produced in 2014 during his residency in New York.
Jardin used educational school posters that he found in Brooklyn, applying chemical solvents to dissolve the existing images and construct a new abstracted pictoriality. His process breaks the educational texts into subjective gestures, evocations, fragments of images and free associations of words.
The accompanying essay by Alex Bacon, a critic and curator based in New York, offers a thoughtful re- flexion on the Blackboard series, relating the works to questions of language, childhood memories and the act of painting itself.
« Lucas Jardin’s works operate in the space between revelation and concealment. »
« This exploration of the significance of gesture in our time is not only formal, for Jardin has long been interested in using pedagogical materials as the support for his painterly, yet conceptual, investigation of the contemporary conditions of mark-making. »
