Kai Morikawa vs. Richard Jackson
August 12 – September 29, 2025
KAI MORIKAWA VERSUS RICHARD JACKSON was the first edition of The Holland Project Gallery’s VERSUS exhibition series, a pairing of two artists with different backgrounds and unlikely similarities. The chosen artists are given full autonomy in how they choose to approach their collaboration. The final exhibition reflects on the interpersonal workings of the artist and how they not only navigated the physical space of the gallery, but how they also work with or against others toward a shared goal.
VERSUS fosters an opportunity for some playful competition between artists to uncover similarities and differences between their practices, and allows artists from different generations and experience levels to push each other in whole new ways. Despite a clear difference in Kai Morikawa and Richard Jackson’s aesthetic identity and studio practice, an overlap exists between the two in recurring themes of mortality, humor, pop culture, and material. This exhibition was proposed to the artists without either having prior knowledge of the other’s work. This furthers an underlying curatorial goal to increase threads and relationships throughout the Reno art scene and create a more tangible, interconnected community.
For this exhibition, Kai and Richard chose a “call and response” approach to their collaboration. Richard executed a new collection of ceramic skulls specifically for the exhibition, hung them uniformly in the gallery, and Kai responded through the addition of felt and clay works and a mural illustrated across the gallery walls. Together, they also amassed a library of special and meaningful objects from their offices, studios, or homes that inspire their artistic individualities. Through this effort, each artist has been pushed outside their usual comfort zone as their similar sensibilities become more obvious and intertwined.
