Sergej Jensen
Dog Show Painting Show
27 November 2010 – 16 January 2011
Alte Brücke 2 / Maininsel
60594 Frankfurt am Main
www.portikus.de
Exhibition on view: 11/27/2010 – 01/16/2011
Press conversation: 11/26/2010, 11am
Lecture: Städelschule, 11/23/2010, 7pm
Concert: YE OLDE ROPE. Husain Richter Jensen, 01/14/2011, 8pm
Sergej Jensen (b. 1973) is among the younger representatives of the contemporary generation of painters. His oeuvre includes paintings, music, performances, and installations; the paintings, mostly abstract compositions in large formats, take center stage. Jute, linen, and colorful fabrics now on standardized stretcher frames and now on frames he builds himself are the materials Sergej Jensen uses as textile support media. Yet they are more than mere grounds onto which a picture is applied, as is customarily the case in painting; instead, they become the work’s content in their own right as found traces of wear and use on the fabrics suddenly take on a painterly quality when the textiles are stretched, affixed, glued, or sown onto or into one another. Sergej Jensen uses pigments, diamond dust, nail polish, yarn, woolen threads, bleach, or the effects of exposure to the weather as painterly means. The way Jensen manipulates his pictures in a process that often takes months, even years, allows them to come into being almost as though of their own accord, as humidity and exposure to the sun, for instance, generate effects that are impossible to create with selected techniques or treatments. The organic materials the artist likes to use change over time—an aspect that is of central importance in Jensen’s oeuvre. The traces of transience become in his work a painterly gesture. His paintings are accordingly never pure and formalist expressions of artistic creativity, but always also autonomous organisms that develop partly in accordance with their own laws.
At Portikus, Sergej Jensen will subdivide the exhibition space. The front half of the room will be used to present a selection of new and existing paintings by the artist. A temporary wall in the back section of the room will create a cabinet-like area in which Jensen will present for the first time his dog drawings, an impressive collection he has created over an extended period of time, working on a great variety of support media. This collection has given the exhibition its title, Dog Show Painting Show.
On January 14, 2011 at 8pm, YE OLDE ROPE, featuring Oliver Husain, Claus Richter, and Sergej Jensen, will perform in a live concert in the exhibition. The three artists have been bandmates since 1998 and have appeared together in several countries.
DISTANZ Verlag will publish the first monographic catalogue of Sergej Jensen in early 2011. Co-published by Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, Bergen Kunsthall, Norway, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden, MoMA PS1, New York and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main; with texts by Peter Eleey, Jacob Fabricius, Rainald Goetz, Dirk von Lowtzow, Melanie Ohnemus, Susanne Pfeffer and Heidi Zuckerman-Jacobson
ISBN 978-3-942405-06-5
With generous support from Stiftung Polytechnische Gesellschaft.
For more information and guided tours of the exhibition please contact info@portikus.de
The exhibition of Sergej Jensen’s work is one in a series of exhibitions entitled MainWerk – a cooperation between Stiftung Polytechnische Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main, the Städelschule, and the Portikus. Once every year, the exhibition series seeks to show a work of art created especially for the Portikus by a former student at the Städelschule who has successfully pursued a career as an artist after graduation and is being exhibited on the national or international stage. By showing his or her work at the Portikus, the series seeks to bring this artist back – at least temporarily – to Frankfurt and to present his or her work to a local audience. With this exhibition series, Stiftung Polytechnische Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main, seeks to draw attention to Frankfurt’s contribution to contemporary art and to support young artists from Frankfurt.
Stiftung Polytechnische Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main, was founded in 2005. Its philanthropic work is concentrated in three main areas: education, science, and technology; arts and culture, including preservation of the city’s cultural heritage; and social, charitable, and humanitarian work. It seeks to contribute to Frankfurt’s development as a model modern and citizen-centered urban society.
Sergej Jensen
b. 1973 in Maglegaard, Denmark
lives and works in Berlin and New York
studied under Prof. Thomas Bayrle at Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main
Solo exhibitions (selection): 2010, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, USA; The Last Twenty Minutes of 2001, White Cube, London; Portikus 2009 KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; 2008 Pictures and Paintings, Anton Kern Gallery, New York; Pictures and Paintings, Galerie Neu, Berlin; Sergej Jensen (with Henrik Olesen), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Malmö Konsthall, Sweden; Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; 2007 Nomadic bags and bag faces, The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; 2006 La chambre de la peinture, White Cube, London; Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo
Group exhibitions (selection): 2010 “…”, Galerie Neu, Berlin; More Carpets, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin; The House of Wonder, Galerie Neu, Berlin; “SHAZAM!”, Galerie Gerhardsen Gerner, Berlin; 2009; Getting Nowhere, Galleria Gentilli, Prato; The Splendour of Fear, Michael Benevento, Los Angeles; Sergej Jensen, Wolfgang Breuer, Annette Kelm, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Nothing to say and I am saying it, Kunstverein Freiburg.
*Image above:
Courtesy of the Artist and Galerie NEU Berlin.
