Best known for his monumental sculptural installations and emotionally charged, energetic paintings, Jason Hackenwerth creates work that confronts viewers with the inevitability of transformation, decay, and mortality. His colorful sculptures, composed of inflatable latex balloons woven into colossal organic structures, recall the magic of childhood balloon animals, swords, and pirate hats.
Their bouncy, plump shapes, reminiscent of a futuristic spacecraft, an alien creature with tentacles, or a giant Venus flytrap, slowly wilt and deflate over time. First, their surfaces lose their sheen, then their forms collapse, and their once-vibrant presence begins to fade. In witnessing this process, viewers are forced to confront their own impermanence. For Hackenwerth, human beings often fear the reality of mortality, yet decay and renewal are inseparable aspects of the cyclical nature of existence, and this confrontation with and contemplation of ephemerality within his work are intended as a meditation on life itself.
Beneath this exploration of impermanence lies a personal dimension. Hackenwerth uses his work to process childhood trauma, personal doubts, and struggles. After becoming sober in 2009 so he could be fully present for his own children, his art became increasingly connected to healing, self-awareness, and emotional honesty. The resulting works oscillate between a range of raw emotions, from melancholy and joy to grief and elation, and from pain to wonder. His paintings, in particular, carry an emotional load that can at times feel both devastating and uplifting. Filled with drama and chaos, they can “punch you in the gut,” as the artist puts it, while also radiating poetry, humor, and hope, often finding root in the magical environment of childhood and storytelling.
The acceptance of uncertainty is also central to Hackenwerth’s painting process. Erasure and reinvention appear as essential components of the work’s creation. Revealing contemporary insecurities and continual attempts to build meaning anew, the surfaces are disrupted with gestural marks and layered with paint “skins” – some bearing the artist’s initials – that repeatedly obscure or transform the visual plane.
Anchored in the tradition of Abstract Expressionism, at the crossroads of the Color Field Movement and Action Painting, but punctuated with cartoon-like figures, fragments of phrases, and ABC letters that we try as viewers to piece together, Hackenwerth’s process mirrors the instability and complexity of human consciousness itself, embracing imperfection and trying to find meaning as an essential truth of existence. Fundamentally, Hackenwerth believes that “if people could learn to see beauty in things as they are, rather than endlessly striving for unattainable ideals, the world might become a more compassionate and accepting place.”
Many of Hackenwerth’s works evoke the idea that “everyone has their own mountain to climb,” and they face ongoing personal struggles, moments of collapse, and opportunities for renewal. Though the compositions may initially appear spontaneous, surrendering control to the medium and process of immediacy, repeated patterns – hands in particular, resembling that of a puppeteer’s – and the collision of forms and interrupted phrases generate new meanings and emotional associations over time and throughout his installation for the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art.
Ultimately, Hackenwerth’s bold and sensual work is an expression of what it means to be alive. Through disruption, improvisation, and intuitive mark-making, he allows his thought process to dissolve into gesture and flow. His paintings and sculptures reflect collective emotional states while emphasizing the interconnectedness of all things, reminding us of our impermanent and imperfect yet formidable human condition, and what a thrill it is to be alive and flourishing in the skins we inhabit.
