The City Rises: Robert Jacks

Robert Jacks is often defined by the grid, but his relationship with it was a restless, lifelong dialogue. This exhibition, The City Rises, traces that evolution from the late 1960s to his mature career, showing how a simple geometric structure became his primary language for navigating the world.

The story begins in 1968, a pivotal year when Jacks left a successful career in Melbourne to become a "nobody" in New York. This transition was the catalyst for his most radical work. In Melbourne, he had been known for Cubist-inspired compositions, but New York demanded a more rigorous, stripped-back approach. Works from this period, such as Red Painting (1968), show Jacks moving away from traditional European modernism toward a fresh, energetic exploration of colour field abstraction.

In New York, Jacks became part of an avant-garde circle that included Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, and the critic Lucy Lippard. Under their influence, the grid became more than just a pattern but rather a modular system of exploration. His work from the late 1960s and early 1970s, including his hanging felt grids and rubber works, treated the grid as a physical, sculptural object. These were often made from cheap, industrial materials—felt, cardboard, string, and wire—which made them easy to install and portable for an artist on the move.

In 1971, Sol LeWitt selected Jacks to inaugurate a series of artist-selected exhibitions in the lobby of the New York Cultural Centre. This "Modular" show highlighted Jacks’ ability to create "small abstract monuments" that occupied the floor or leaned against walls. Pieces like Untitled (The Black Window) (1972) and Transitions (1972) reflect this period of intense reduction, where the grid was used to map out space and time with clinical precision.

However, by 1975, Jacks began to find the minimalist grid too formulaic. When he returned briefly to Australia to show his New York work at the South Yarra Gallery, it divided critics who weren't yet accustomed to such austere conceptualism. Seeking a change, Jacks moved to Texas, where the jagged landforms and open spaces prompted a return to more organic forms.

The City Rises works represent Jacks’ late-career return to the grid, but with a new sense of rhythm and atmosphere. The rigid lines of his youth evolved into vertical "stacks" that suggest the pulse of a metropolis. These paintings are no longer just about geometry; they are about the "silent narratives" of urban life—the height of buildings, the flow of traffic, and the vibration of the street. By charting this history, we see that the grid was never a static formula for Jacks, but a flexible framework that allowed him to capture the energy of the modern world.