Jason Biggs, Torn Up

It strikes me that the lightning bolt is the defining symbol of Jason Biggs’s artworks. It strikes me…the electrification of the moment seems to be the guiding principle, the energy in the atmosphere. You can almost hear the collages coming into being, the rush of inspiration, the spontaneous movement of the scissoring and ripping and splicing, the addition of paint and ink, the sheer alchemical force. The work kind of arrives through a protean process of emotion, gesture, accident, chance encounter, risk, play, impulse, expression, erasure, assemblage…and then abandoned – or perhaps set free – when the process suggests that this is the moment to stop. It strikes me that each artwork is a kind of self portrait of the artist in the present tense – electrical, imaginative weather. Jason Biggs is a lightning rod and the exhibition is a kind of weather report or autobiography of who he is right now.

Jeff Young, March 2023.