First museum exhibition of Jason Moran's visual art coming to the Wexner Center for the Arts for spring 2019

The Wexner Center for the Arts has hosted multiple concerts by world-renowned jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran. June 1 through August 11, the multidisciplinary art space at The Ohio State University will showcase another aspect of his creative output: visual art. Jason Moran, the first exhibition to present his illustrations, installations, and video work in a museum context. completes a spring 2019 exhibition season that also includes Barbara Hammer: In This Body and Cecilia Vicuña: Lo Precario/The Precarious.

Organized by the Walker Art Center, the touring exhibition features 48 objects that highlight the scope of work Moran has explored, from intimate charcoal drawings to collaborations with a range of visual artists, to grand sculptural installations inspired by the role of the venue in making live music.

“It feels right for my first museum exhibition to land at the Wexner Center, where interdisciplinary work is embraced and architectural space plays an active role in the experience of everyone who enters its doors,” says Moran. “My installations focus on the importance of space—what historic jazz venues have brought us and how they’ve each created an environment for freedom for the musicians who take the stage. Because it’s not simply about the musicians. It’s about the space that surrounds them.”

Moran grounds his practice in music while bridging the visual and performing arts. Known for dynamic musical compositions that challenge conventional forms, Moran has an equally experimental approach to producing his visual art, which pushes beyond the traditionally staged performance, sculpture, or drawing to amplify the ways that all are inherently theatrical.

The exhibition will feature Moran’s mixed-media “set” installations that pay homage to legendary, now-departed jazz venues such as New York’s Savoy Ballroom and Chicago’s Three Deuces. In-gallery musical performances will activate the installations during the run of the exhibition, starting with the Spring Exhibitions Preview on Friday, May 31. 

Moran further riffs on the word “set” through long-standing collaborations with artists including Joan Jonas, Lorna Simpson, Glenn Ligon, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, Kara Walker, and Carrie Mae Weems. They’re represented by video-based installations such as The Death of Tom (2009), a collaboration with Ligon, and Chess (2013), in which trompe l’oeil is a third player in a game in which Moran and Simpson engage.

Jason Moran is organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, The exhibition was curated by Adrienne Edwards, the former Curator at Large, Visual Arts, for the Walker, with Danielle Jackson, former Mellon Interdisciplinary Fellow, Visual Arts. The Wexner Center’s presentation is overseen by Senior Curator of Exhibitions Michael Goodson and Director of Exhibitions Management Megan Cavanaugh.