Jackson Markovic @ 2299 Cheshire Bridge Rd NE
A late review of Jackson’s ephemeral, on-site exhibition that took place May 21, 2021.
Jackson Markovic’s ephemeral photo exhibition, 2299, took place outside in the same streets he made the work in: Cheshire Bridge Road in Atlanta, GA. The opening was a one-night-only affair. I followed the address provided and arrived at a desolate parking lot with a dilapidated boarded-up building on which the artist’s photos hung — the 2299 building. It was hard to tell what this defunct building was once used for. It had bright primary-colored balloons haphazardly affixed to its deteriorating black awning. It sat on a busy and shadeless corner with traffic lights, and a consistent stream of cars came and went in the periphery. Tired and hot pedestrians walked by unhurriedly. Two gas stations surrounded us, one on each side of the street. Cars and people and birds swirled around. Being situated here immediately took me outside of myself. I sank back, took in the energy of this particular place, and had the strong feeling that there is nowhere else I’d rather be at this moment.
As I looked at the 2299 building deeper I noticed that the only purely monochromatic color around was the blue of the sky. Otherwise, everything in front of me: the layers of peeled paint on this building, the stained concrete, the medley of tree pulp forming the boarded-up windows, were an unending continuum of color and texture. Forces of time, of materials coming undone and becoming something else, manifested in ripe articulations: cracks, splits, color shifts, edges growing uneven, surfaces left fending for themselves. There’s a certain freedom present that these material expressions emanate, of being left alone, going unnoticed, being able to undergo change without a feeling of judgment.
The 2299 building is additionally a canvas for people to proclaim small credos and affirmations. The exterior walls are stained with deliberate mark-making, scribbles of graffiti tags, and text: little words like “suck,” “fuck,” “swag,” and someone named “Raz,” and “Red.” There are big bubble letters that feel sensuous from softness in the spray paint running low from the can.
Jackson Markovic’s work, consisting of fifteen staggered 11x14 photographs, are positioned in a way that integrates them into the life of this building and others’ actions and traces. The photographs are impossible to look at without considering and physically feeling the environment before me. Several of the photos are vulnerable feeling portraits of inhabitants of Cheshire Bridge Rd. There is a queerness reflected in the dress and self-expression of these individuals. Cheshire Bridge Road is an area well known for its sex shops, strip clubs, and gay clubs, and a simultaneous sense of self-pride and the struggle of self-preservation is felt in both those photographed and the topography of where I am looking at them. The more still-life photographs further elucidate the artist’s compulsion to befriend things left alone. Photos of a chemical hazard suit hanging bodiless in the street and a wedding dress affixed to a tree evoke a simultaneous feeling of a devastating abandonment and also a lust for jagged, unrelenting life.
Several photographs consist of hallucinatory double exposures of retro-looking neon light signs, presumably from sex shop windows, overlaid atop building facades and soft silhouettes of bodies. These images are a bit more languid, inward, and refracted. They exude a slow and soft confusion. A double exposure image of the Gold Spa is a site of memorialization. The spa, located a block from Cheshire Bridge Rd, is one of the three Atlanta locations where tragic shootings occurred earlier this year. The photograph consists of the spa’s front exterior suffused with a fiery golden sunset over the top. Placed on the concrete below the photograph sits a bouquet of flowers in a red solo cup to honor the lives of the women who were victims of the shooting. A tangible earnestness and authentic respect for the complexities of this neighborhood are felt through the contemplative slowness of the multi-layered images along with their dynamic presentation.
A desire to accept and be accepted is palpable in the work. A kind of genuine admiration and embrace of this neighborhood is felt like the way one grows fond of the imperfections of their lover. Maybe like the body odor of someone you love — objectively, it is a repellent scent. But through time and affection and falling in love, the smell becomes intoxicating. A small acceptance that turns into a full embrace. There is a candid appetite for these imperfections in this exhibition, for fully embracing what might be considered undesirable by most.
This ethos of acceptance is also reflected in the blueprint of the exhibition — an ephemeral show contingent on the environment’s conditions — lasting only until the photos fall down. The exhibition didn’t last more than two days because the sun melted the hanging adhesive on the back of the photographs. As the pictures fell, they were up for grabs from those walking by or residing there. They resume a curious second life somewhere. Weeks later, I had learned that Jackson mounted all of the photographic prints on repurposed gator board signs he found on the side of the road. What struck me was that there was no art object preciousness nor overprotection of the work, which feels scarce in the contemporary art scene. If there is a sense of preciousness in 2299 it is located within a framework of perception and experience orchestrated by Jackson.
While encountering the work at the same location in which it was made perhaps risks giving too much away to viewers, it had the opposite effect. A fascinating transparency and curious relationship between photo and reality surfaced. The confrontation of late afternoon heat, city noise, pedestrian gazes, residents of the street, crumbling building, and disregarded objects strewn around as I viewed the photographs drew me closer to what was inside of the photographic frame. The reality inside and outside of the frame ricocheted and melded. There was a liberating permission and autonomy to look beyond and away from the photos, and then back at them. As my eyes darted between photograph and the actual street before me, I became more and more aware of the artist’s nuanced engagement and delicate affection towards this very place.
For more images of Jackson’s work: https://www.jacksonmarkovic.com
Instagram: @jacksonmarkovic
About me: https://www.madelinepieschel.net
