Jason Middlebrook, Black and White Plank #3

Jason Middlebrook
Black and White Plank #3
2011
Acrylic on wood plank
78 x 16 x 2 inches (198.12 x 40.64 x 5.08 cm)

Provenance
Dodge Gallery
Private Collection, New York

About the Artwork

Unique by virtue of its unusual shape and its black and white abstract pattern, Black and White Plank #3 is exemplary of Jason Middlebrook’s celebrated ‘Plank’ series. Each of the timber planks is carefully chosen by the artist on the basis of its distinctive natural form thus echoing a process of natural selection. However, the role of nature in the creation of these pieces goes beyond the aesthetics of the physical shape. As the artist has explained, the geometries and abstractions with which the trunks are embellished and transformed into works of art are as much a product of his mind as they are of a natural process and the passing of time: “No matter what I paint on those planks, I have to take into account that the tree did so much more work than what I did. The tree lived for a hundred years, and it compressed all that time into the grain. Every time I do a plank painting, I’m trying to respect nature, but also create my own parking lot, my own highway.”

About the Artist

Jason Middlebrook (b. 1966, Jackson, Michigan) received a BFA from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1990 and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in California in 1994. Middlebrook participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York from 1994 to 1995. 

Middlebrook’s work has been featured in many solo exhibitions at institutions including Submerged, SCAD, Savannah, GA (2014-15); My Landscape, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2013-14); Under Life, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2013); Untitled (Let San Salvador inspire the way), Museo de Arte de El Salvador, San Salvador (2007); The Beginning of the End, Aldrich Contemporary Museum of Art, Ridgefield, CT (2004); Dig, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2001). His work has also been in group exhibitions at Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA (2015); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA (2014); SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM (2014); Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (2014); Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI (2013); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX (2012); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL (2010); Tang Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, (2009); Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC (2004); and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2000).

Middlebrook’s work has been acquired by major collections around the world a selection of which includes Altoids Collection, NY; British Airways Art Collection, Waterside, UK; The Contemporary, Austin, TX; Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Microsoft Corporate Art Collection, Redmond, WA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, NY; New Museum, NY; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; Progressive Art Collection, Mayfield, OH; and Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.