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Jack Pierson (born 1960 in Plymouth, Massachusetts) is an American photographer and an artist. Pierson is known for his photographs, collages, word sculptures, installations, drawings and artists books. His "Self-Portrait" series was shown in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. His works are held in numerous museum collections.
Pierson first began making his Word Sculptures in 1991, utilizing found objects – mismatched letters salvaged from junkyards, old movie marquees, roadside diners, Las Vegas casinos, and other forsaken enterprises. The word sculptures create individual words or phrases that evoke a multiplicity of meanings. Jack Pierson, April 14 – May 12, 2007 Regen Projects, Los Angeles.
Commissioned in 1997 by the artistic collective Bernadette Corporation, Pierson's video Past Life in Egypt is a collaboration with Ursula Hodel, who plays an outrageous and glamorous dominatrix in the video. At one point, her character sadly recounts her past life as a wicked queen of Egypt, in love with a much younger man and impervious to the suffering of her people. The narrative is at times humorous, sensational and spectacular, but is ultimately grounded in the haze of past memories and the regrets of a past life. Jack Piersom: Melancholia Passing Into Madness, March 30 - May 6, 2006 Cheim & Read Gallery, New York.
In 2003, Pierson published Self Portrait, a book of photographs which features 15 images of beautiful men, arranged to suggest the arc of a lifetime—beginning with a young boy and progressing to old age with men in various stages of undress; none of the images is of the artist himself.
In 2006, inspired by an earlier series of pencil drawings he did from an old postcard of a woman's face, Pierson produced a suite of twelve large-scale silkscreen paintings, all linear graphics in black ink on diffused, off-white linen. Removed from its original and singular representation in a photograph, the portrayed woman's facade is variously multiplied by hand and then enlarged by the machine-like reproduction of silkscreen.
In a group of what Pierson refers to as "first page drawings", original texts from various female authors, already multiplied by machine to the printed word, are returned to the realm of the singular and handwritten original. Pierson diligently copies the first page of books-penned by Barbara Pym, Jean Rhys, Sister Wendy and Marilyn Monroe, among others-on 11 x 14 inch paper.
For the project The Source, artist Doug Aitken filmed a conversation with Pierson, exploring the essence of his creative process. Doug Aitken – The Source: Jack Pierson, 7 December 2012 Tate Modern, London.
In 2025, the Obama Foundation commissioned Pierson to create a sculpture spelling out “hope”, one of President Barack Obama's core campaign slogans, with found letters for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.Elena Goukassian (12 September 2025), Artists including Jenny Holzer, Alison Saar and Kiki Smith creating commissions for Obama Presidential Center The Art Newspaper.
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