Jack Henry is from Flint, Michigan and now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His work takes from the sublime and is refocused into an urgent message… “I've been increasingly interested in the idea of the sublime as something so vast and awe inspiring that a person measures themselves against it and feels his/her own limitations. But the modern landscape can't provide that like it once did. We have asserted our will over nature. You're more likely to find the sublime in the endless frontier of the internet, video games, or retail consumerism,” says Henry.
His work began as a critique on the post-industrial landscape in his hometown and was very much about found objects and abandoned buildings, remnants, seemingly more archaeological than environmental. “But to tell that story is to inadvertently reference pollution, detritus, and environmental disaffection. And I became more concerned with those issues as a result. I want to recreate the majesty of wilderness while showing that it has been corrupted. Maybe still beautiful in a classic sense, but forever changed; plastic, contained, damaged,” Henry explains.
You can see and feel the majesty of wilderness in Henry’s work. It is beautiful in a classic sense. The surreal undertones of destruction are intricately crafted into a magical package. The association with the recast objects placed in space and in time and juxtaposed with a familiarity that holds true in the vast undercurrent of knowledge of change… Like a dream being used to solve the fundamental questions of our existence.