In ‘An American Fiction,’ Ronald Jackson Casts an Imagined Screenplay — Colossal

In the Oscar-winning film American Fiction, the irritable protagonist Thelonious “Monk” Ellison describes his work as follows: “I just invent little people in my mind and make them have conversations with each other.” The film, which director Cord Jefferson adapted from Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, grapples with stereotypes and the ways we’re asked to perform our identities. For Monk, this turns into a satirical quest to write a “Black” book under a pen name, which plunges him into an outlandish world of tropes.

American Fiction layers farce upon farce and is one of the more searing considerations of the contemporary impulse to leverage identity for nefarious (and capitalist) purposes. In Monk’s world, “inventing little people” becomes a meta exercise that leads to more and more absurdity.

The artist Ronald Jackson extrapolates the narrative further in his solo presentation opening this week at Galerie Myrtis. Known for his vibrant portraiture, Jackson creates a sort of casting list for an imagined screenplay that titles the exhibition: An American Fiction.

Through a suite of new oil paintings, the artist playfully envisions a troupe of figures, their names, and their roles. A portrait of a Black man with dreadlocks and red handkerchief tied around his neck, for example, is titled “Pervis Brown: The Apprentice of Oddly Uncommon Trades, played by Cornelius Dunston in AN AMERICAN FICTION.” All of the works are named in this vein, seeding the viewer’s understanding of the imaginary screenplay.

Jackson is familiar with this witty, cross-disciplinary approach. In an earlier body of work, he invented Johnnie Mae King, a recurring character for whom the artist invited the public to imagine a backstory through flash fiction and other writings. This figure also donned Jackson’s signature mask, which frequently appears in An American Fiction, too. He writes about the motif:

I use the mask not to conceal but to signal that a rich, un-excavated narrative exists beneath the surface. It asks the viewer to consider what lies beyond the visible role, prompting a question central to performance: are we admiring the superficial? Do we distinguish between the performer and the character being played? Do we recognize that there is likely a very different reality than the one being presented to us?

A playful, innovative approach to some of the most pressing questions in today’s culture, An American Fiction runs from September 5 to October 3 in Baltimore. Find more from Jackson on Instagram.