Working out of the expansive and arid beauty of the southwestern United States, Jason Saager approaches the subject of landscape through combined artistic processes of printmaking and painting. His elaborate environments majestically unfold onto themselves in surreal harmony, accessible only through magical gateways. These dreamlike works recall a history of representation, where illusionary space has been historically mapped onto the painting’s surface in order to articulate distance, perspective, and duration. A window into another world. Inspired by compositional strategies sourced from naturalist traditions in early Renaissance painting, in concert with the meditative incentives of ancient Chinese landscapes, these works evoke distant pasts that marry two distinctly cultural conceptions of world building: one of control and one of surrender.
Saager’s works are a layered process merging the immediacy and technical prowess of printmaking with the slow, studied precision of rendering imagery in paint. Beginning with a monotype as the initial, foundational layer to these works, Saager designates the ground onto which he formally builds his paintings layering fine intricate brushwork atop of the print, building up a varied density in the landscape of the image.
His work has been presented in recent solo and group exhibitions at Public Access, New York, NY USA; galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, France; Ross+Kramer Gallery, East Hampton, NY USA; Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA USA; Washington Project for the Arts, Washington DC, USA (curated by Ellen Altfest); St. Paul the Apostle, New York, NY USA (curated by Michael Berube and Keena Gonzales); Life on Mars Gallery, Brooklyn, NY USA; SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY USA.
He was the recipient of the Richard Marnin Kaye Award while attending Hunter College. He has had artist residencies at The International School of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture, Montecastello di Vibio, Italy; Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY USA and Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, Brooklyn, NY USA.
