Jason Birmingham

Another Gallery is pleased to present Eleventh Hour, a series of recent paintings by Jason Birmingham.

Jason Birmingham is most comfortable at night. It’s when he works, and where his paintings take shape. In the folds of night lurk fears but also reprieve, providing contrast for sources of unnatural light which haunt his suspenseful, narrative compositions.

In Somebody Call Someone, helicopters illuminate a dark cloudscape with searchlights. The crack of chopper blades are contrasted by buzzing insects and beating wings. In Summer Evening, Birmingham begins with Edward Hopper’s painting of the same name, replacing reclining figures on the porch with a glowing bug zapper. The introduction of artificial light sources becomes heightened in RSVP, depicting a lamp in a field, its murky light spills out, mixing with apocalyptic dusk—a swarm of flying creatures, not quite discernable, color the sky. In Vertical Agreements, lantern bugs crawl across elevator buttons, circled W yellow light, oddly pleasing and decorative yet recalling plague. Visual tension becomes vertigo as Birmingham reworks the sublime, finding meaning in the dark interludes of a world on fire.

Jason Birmingham grew up in Eastern Oregon and lived in Arizona, where he worked in restaurants for a decade before arriving in New York City to pursue painting. He completed his BFA at Hunter College, New York, in 2022. Eleventh Hour is Birmingham’s first exhibition with Another Gallery and his inaugural solo exhibition in New York.