Philadelphia artist Alex Jackson creates work that converges at the disciplines of both painting and writing, using narrative and worldbuilding as conceptual frameworks for image-making. His practice is centered around a continuously expanding text, Color Theory for Ghosts, a book of records written by a character known as Mu, a maroon who believes he has fallen off the edge of the earth. Color Theory for Ghosts details Mu’s self-exile to a volcanic island and the construction of a chromatic communication device for ghosts known as The Spectral Organ. Shifting away from conventional laws of physics, linear narratives, color theories, and racial imaginaries that position blackness as the site of negation, Jackson considers a universe of possibilities with regards to black life and black thought outside of colonial paradigms. This space serves as the guiding foundation, ethos, and framework for his practice as a writer and image-maker.

Jackson’s See Gate series exist as both portals to this narrative world as well as sites for the exploration of color interaction. They explore the emergence of form that results from the interference of various systems and information. This process of superimposition serves as a device to think through the multi-layered and composite nature of our physical, social, historical, and political worlds. In his work for Philadelphia International Airport, Jackson considers the optical phenomenon of illusory motion. Arranged in the required order of value for illusory effect, Jackson utilizes stars and stripes to create the illusion of forward progression, reflecting on the distortions of our individual and subjective perceptions. 

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