Jason Moran: STACKS

Luhring Augustine is pleased to announce STACKS, an exhibition of new and recent work by Jason Moran, will open on November 6 and remain on view through December 19. Marking the artist's third solo show with the gallery, the presentation continues Moran's inquiry into the histories, objects, gestures, and ideas that shape jazz and its cultural landscape, explored through a range of materials including works on paper, sculpture, and video.

Moran's practice is grounded in the relationship between music and language. Working through experimentation and improvisation, and in dialogue with the musicians and artists who have preceded him, Moran moves between sound, image, performance, and material. At the center of the exhibition is a new sculpture of two small upright parlor pianos precariously stacked on top of each other. Through mirroring and inversion, a familiar instrument becomes a monumental architectural form that evokes both the significance of the piano to the history of jazz, as well as the gravity of layers that stack across generations. Also featured in the presentation will be a number of Moran’s celebrated works on paper; pieces that register repeated, accumulated, interrupted, and transformed gestures, such as those made during one of his musical performances. Created with a piano keyboard coated in powdered pigment and sheet of thin Japanese Gampi paper, the works on paper record the pace, pressure, and pauses of Moran’s fingers as he presses the material while playing the instrument. The imprints of pigment against paper generate an image that recall the way sound lingers and decays: chords register as clusters, repeated phrases as dense accumulations, and silences remain open space. Alongside Moran’s new works are a selection of the artist’s collected jazz ephemera, which range from a handmade flag made by the Harlem Hellfighters to a sheet of stamps printed with an image of Thelonius Monk. Collecting these objects has long been a practice of Moran’s, and over time, it has tied the musicians together in a way that allows for the objects themselves to improvise together. The exhibition will also include a new video work by photographer and filmmaker Ari Marcopoulos, made in collaboration with Moran, which reflects the artists’ shared interest in the relationship between sonic textures and image.

Jason Moran (Houston, TX, 1975) is a jazz pianist, composer, and artist. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022. He is the Curator at the Park Avenue Armory and was the Artistic Director for Jazz at The Kennedy Center from 2011-2025. His activity includes recordings and performances with masters of the form including Charles Lloyd, Bill Frisell, and the late Sam Rivers, as well as his work with his trio The Bandwagon (with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen) that has resulted in a profound discography for Blue Note Records and his own label Yes Records. The scope of Moran’s partnerships and music-making with venerated and iconic visual artists is extensive: he has collaborated with such major figures as Adrian Piper, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Stan Douglas, Adam Pendleton, Lorna Simpson, and Kara Walker. Commissioning institutions of Moran’s work include the Walker Art Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Dia Art Foundation, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Harlem Stage, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. Recent institutional solo shows include Jason Moran: Black Stars: Writing in the Dark at Mass MoCA in North Adams (2022-26), Bathing the Room with Blues at The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2021-22), as well as Jason Moran, organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN in 2018, which traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, and was accompanied by a monograph.