Marcus Jansen MERCHANTS OF BABYLON April 25th - May 25th, 2019
822 East Las Olas Blvd. Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301 - 954.524.2100 - www.newriverfineart.com
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For Judy, our very own wounded
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warrior.
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Painting is the most intimate act of war. ...Marcus Jansen
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SOS, 2014
30 x 31 x 23 inches Oils enamels, aerosol paint and object on wood
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CONTENTS FOREWORD 7 THE DEFIANT ART OF MARCUS JANSEN ELISA TUNER 9 ARTIST BIOGRAPHY 11 PAINTINGS 12-24 FACELESS SERIES 25-31 AERIAL VIEWS 32-33 ARTIST STATEMENT 34 WORKS ON PAPER 35-43 ARTIST CURRICULUM VITAE 44-46 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 47
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Photo Credit: Mirko Fisher
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FOREWORD When the universe speaks…listen. After following Marcus Jansen’s career for several years, I received an email from him inquiring about a painting for sale in the gallery. I took this email as a sign, for Marcus Jansen is an artist of rare talent whose art speaks volumes about political ideology, economic, military and sociologic conflict and consequences. And the universe is listening. Marcus Jansen has been called the “cartographer of conflict”. His socially critical paintings weave tales of a world in turmoil with isolation, threat, war, surveillance and greed in competition with innocence, hope and humanity. His colors, textures and calligraphic marks imbue an intensity and power to his large scale works that render the human figures seen in many of his post-apocalyptic landscapes as humbled within the chaos of the surrounding imagery. Jansen is no stranger to this type of chaos. A veteran of Desert Storm and Desert Shield, he has seen the ravages of war first hand and the experience left an indelible mark on the artist and informs his work both consciously and organically. Jansen’s artistic roots took ground in New York’s graffiti scene, but years spent living in Germany infused his work with the influence of Expressionists, especially through brush stroke and use of color. While he subverts the traditional landscape to put his finger in the wounds of today’s most controversial topics, Jansen uses light and color to infuse a sense of hope for the human condition. The result is powerfully impactful work with striking imagery that brings an emotional cauldron of thoughts, feelings and images to the viewer as the tale of the art unfolds. Today, Jansen is recognized as one of the most important American painters of his generation. A winner of the Grand Prize Award, Dave Bown Projects, United States, curated by Andrea Karnes (Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth) and in 2011, commissioned by Absolut Vodka for the Absolut Blank campaign. His work has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions including Museum La Triennale di Milano, Milan, Italy; Kallmann Museum, Munich, Germany; Museum Zitadelle, Berlin, Germany; the Kemper Museum of Contemporay Art, Kansas City, MO in 2018 and opening in 2020, the Cornell Museum of Art at Rollins College, Winterpark, FL. I am honored to share his work with New River Fine Art’s collectors. Marcus Jansen is speaking – and the art world is listening. ...Lisa Burgess
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La Triennale di Milano Museum, Milan Italy
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THE DEFIANT ART OF MARCUS JANSEN BY ELISA TURNER Paintings by widely exhibited artist Marcus Jansen simmer with dread. Apocalyptic chaos looms. He punctuates his compositions with streaks of jittery lines, echoing spray-painted graffiti on countless urban canyons and in-your-face street art. They are deliberate disrupters in paintings that refuse to be polite and pretty. These are paintings to challenge the mind and eye. Alluding to the Bible’s Book of Revelation, the title of this exhibit, “Merchants of Babylon,” prepares us for defiant art layered with timely social and political protest. The title evokes an ancient era when powerful leaders used their position to enrich themselves. It’s a narrative in sync with current headlines. To convey a sense of dread, Jansen portrays landscapes as bleak, unstable zones, scarred by shifting spatial perspectives. Such is the case with Grand Chessboard. Much of the canvas is an atmospheric abstraction in dreary tones. It dwarfs a barely perceptible eagle guarding a three-dimensional chessboard near the painting’s lower edge. On this board, tiny, shadowy human figures pursue lonely paths. They vividly convey a lost sense of direction and purpose, of human agency eclipsed. Jansen demands we attend their plight by skillfully depicting an absurd exercise in gamesmanship. Amplifying that foreboding aura, in this painting and others, circles evoking targets and bullet holes randomly appear. Erroneous mathematical equations, like 8+8=13, aimlessly hover. They slyly suggest “fake news” and accusations thereof. Jansen came to the art world with a distinctive history. Born in 1968 in Manhattan to a Jamaican mother and German father, he spent his early years in the Bronx. The era’s spray-painted graffiti on subway trains surely made an indelible impression. From the late 1970s to the late 1980s, he lived in Germany, exposed to his father’s passion for politics, world history, and current events. A brief stint of formal art training was followed by work as a commercial house painter. Witnessing brutal events of Desert Storm and other conflicts as a U.S. Army soldier, Jansen later underwent art therapy at Walter Reed Hospital, receiving an honorable discharge in 1997. Around 2000, he was drawn to creativity percolating in downtown Manhattan, possibly inspired by the well-known Bowery Graffiti Wall on East Houston Street, first painted by Keith Haring in 1982. Clearly the emotional and physical wages of war, along with the rebellious spirit of graffiti art, inform his prolific, defiant career as an artist.
Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved by Elisa Turner, M.A., International Association of Art Critics, U.S. Section
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Photo Credit: Sabrina Gruber
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BIOGRAPHY Marcus Jansen was born 1968 in Manhattan, New York, resided with his family in the South Bronx and later, Laurelton, Queens where he started school. His family later moved to Mönchengladbach, Germany, where he received a German education and grew up bilingual. Jansen’s unique artistic vocabulary was discovered by the former Museum Director of the American Vanguard Exhibitions Europe 1961, Jerome A. Donson; who wrote about Jansen’s work as being “reminiscent of the Ash-Can School,” and named him the “innovator of modern expressionism.” While showing in Munich, the home of the German Expressionist painters’ movement, Jansen, was noted as “one of the most important American painters of his generation” by the only two-time Documenta Kassel Curator and German Art Historian, Prof. Dr. Manfred Schneckenburger. Inspired by the rebellious art form of graffiti from his native Bronx and Manhattan in the early 1970’s and later again in the early 1980’s on his return visits when he met some of the city’s second generation graffiti art pioneers, the movement became a catalyst for Jansen in the 1990’s, advancing a new generation into socially charged urban landscape paintings. Jansen was influenced by the two very different worlds he grew up in and it’s this contrast that helped mold him into one of a handful of international leading combatants of the avant-garde. His paintings are often situated between contemporary and street or graffiti art elements that explore and document the human condition critically, socially and politically. Jansen’s public collections include the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, The New Britain Museum of American Art, The PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art, The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, the Housatonic Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. His documentary film is titled, “Marcus Jansen Examine and Report” filmed by Emmy award winning filmmaker John Scholar. The next upcoming Jansen museum exhibition will be held at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum in Florida in 2020 and is planned to travel to other institutions in the United States.
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PAINTINGS
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Grand Chessboard, 2019
60 x 48 inches Oils enamels, aerosol paint and oil pastel on canvas
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Recon 1, 2019
48 x 48 inches Oils enamels, aerosol paint and mixed media on canvas
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The Rescue Ring I Found Close By, 2015
108 x 88 inches Oils enamels, aerosol paint, oil pastel and collage on canvas
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Mind Play, 2019
Oil enamels, aerosol paint and oil pastel on canvas 60 x 72 inches
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On Top of Mountain, 2019
48 x 36 inches Oil enamels, aerosol paint and mixed media on canvas
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Water Rising, 2019
48 x 48 inches Oil enamels, aerosol paint and mixed media on canvas
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Orwellian Studio, 2019
Oil enamels, aerosol paint and oil pastel on canvas 60 x 72 inches
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Red Tape and Chess Games, 2019
48 x 48 inches Oil enamels, aerosol paint and mixed media on canvas
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When History Repeats 2015 88 x 135 inches Oils enamels, aerosol paint, oil pastel and collage on canvas
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The Rock In My Hand, 2015
84 x 72 inches Oils enamels, aerosol paint, oil pastel and collage on canvas
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Photo Credit: Sabrina Gruber
FACELESS SERIES Marcus Jansen examines secrecy and anonymity in his continuing Faceless series and investigates who has power and who doesn’t. He depicts largely faceless men in suits, uniforms or prison clothing that can be seen as an anonymous power or oppressed power structure of society. 25
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Faceless 19, 2014
40 x 30 inches Oil enamels and aerosol paint on canvas
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Purple Heart, 2019
74 x 50 inches Oil enamels, aerosol paint and oil pastel on canvas
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Faceless Jackass, 2017
74 x 50 inches Oil enamels, aerosol paint, oil pastel and collage on canvas
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Faceless Bandit, 2019
74 x 50 inches Oil enamels, aerosol paint and oil pastel on canvas
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Blue Bloods, 2017
74 x 50 inches Oils enamels, aerosol paint and oil pastel on canvas
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Faceless Inmate, 2015
74 x 50 inches Oils enamels, aerosol paint and oil pastel on canvas
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AERIAL VIEWS
The work explores a birds eye view of three dimensional lanscape painting using various objects and mixed media on wood initiated by Jansen’s experience in his first Gulf War conflict in 1990 as he flew over front line areas via helicopter. This sparked interest in an ongoing series that has expaneded since 2009, where Jansen explores the increasing surveillance state, while switching from frontal two dimensional landscapes to gestural three dimensional aerial views.
The Pit, 2012
28 x 46 x 6 inches Oils enamels, aerosol paint, oil pastels and collage on panel 32
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ARTIST STATEMENT Fundamentally my work has psychologically examined some main underlying subjects; power, freedom and warfare on the human condition, three conflicting paradoxes. I use freedom to express visually and respond to observations that have directly affected myself and/or mankind in this century. I’m interested in what drives both elements and investigate through a concentrated reality that I achieve from using an instinctive painting approach, much like the Abstract Expressionist painters; only I include an objective subject matter and ride lines between abstract and realism for a surreal like world. My work investigates different underlying warfare elements that impact much of today’s society and I =continue to center my work around today’s realities, economics and global discourse often politically and socially charged criticism. I’m not interested in ‘pretty’ paintings or paintings of aesthetic value. I’m interested in the soul and character of today’s contemporary realities. Some elements include the toll of economic, class, psychological and military warfare.
Painterly Spirit, 2014
48 x 41 x 36 inches Oils enamels, aerosol paint, toy, plastic and tags on wood 34
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WORKS ON PAPER Jansen’s works on paper have, in large part, been the initial experiments that often prerequisite larger canvas studies. These works in particular explore the freedom of his instinct and brush usage using typical and traditional Abstract Expressionist techniques, keeping the work more gestural and ambiguous. His narrative, if any, is born out of the abstraction itself rather than any preconceived notions.
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Faceless on Shaky Ground I, 2019
30 x 22 inches Oils enamels and aerosol paint on paper
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Faceless on Shaky Ground II, 2019
30 x 22 inches Oils enamels and aerosol paint on paper
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Orwellian 20, 2018
11 x 14 inches Oils, aerosol paint and mixed media paper
Orwellian 23, 2018
11 x 14 inches Oils, aerosol paint and mixed media paper
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Orwellian 32, 2018
11 x 14 inches Oils, aerosol paint and mixed media paper
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Faceless Soulmates, 2019
30 x 22 inches Oil enamels, aerosol paint and oil pastels on paper
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Faceless Blues , 2019
30 x 22 inches Oil enamels, aerosol paint and oil pastels on paper
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The Desert and Its Tales, 2017 19 x 24 inches Oil enamels, aerosol paint on paper
When Oil Deals Are Made, 2017 42
19 x 24 inches Oil enamels, aerosol paint on paper
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Prayers in the Middle East, 2017
19 x 24 inches Oil enamels, aerosol paint on paper
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Marcus Jansen - B. 1968, New York, NY Education 1985 – 1986 Gewerbliche Schulen der Stadt Moenchengladbach, Berufskolleg für Technik und Medien, Fachrichtung, Gestaltung. 1986 - 1989 Gewerbliche Schulen der Stadt Moenchengladbach, Berufsschule fuer Maler U. Lackierer. Mentor Jerome A. Donson, (Art Historian and Director of the American Vanguard Exhibitions, MOMA 1961) Awards 2012 Grand Prize Winner award, Dave Bown Projects, United States, Curated by Andrea Karnes (Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth) Upcoming Exhibitions Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Fl Baker Museum, Fl Museum Solo Exhibitions 2018 Museum Zitadelle, Marcus Jansen / New Horizons, Berlin, Germany 2017
Kallmann Museum, “Ecce Creatura“, (four solo artists) Ismaning, Munich, Germany
2016
Museum La Triennale di Milano, Marcus Jansen / DECADE, Milan, Italy
Monographs / Books 2017 Marcus Jansen AFTERMATH, published by Hirmer Verlag, Munich, Germany. Foreword by Art Historian, Prof Dr Dieter Ronte, Director Kunst Museum Bonn and Vienna. 2016
Marcus Jansen DECADE, published by Skira Editore, Milan, Italy. Foreword by Steve Lazarides and essay by Art Historian Brooke Lynn McGowan Ph.D.
2004
Modern Urban-Expressionism, the Art of Marcus Antonius Jansen, published by American Art Gallery, Paris, France. Foreword by Art Historian, Jerome A. Donson, Director of the American Vanguard Exhibitions 1961, MOMA New York.
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Selected Exhibitions 2018 Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Deconstructing Marcus Jansen, Kansas, MO Museum Zitadelle, Marcus Jansen / New Horizons, Berlin, Germany Aspen Art Museum / ArtCrush, Casterline Goodman Gallery, Aspen, CO 2017 Kallmann Museum, „Ecce Creatura“, (four solo artists) Ismaning, Munich, Germany 2016 La Triennale di Milano Museum, Marcus Jansen / DECADE, Milan, Italy Lazarides, Rathbone, Still Here - A Decade of Lazarides, London, UK 2015 Cityleaks Urban Art Biennale, Cologne, Germany 2014 U.S. Department of State, Art in Embassies, UNESCO, Paris France Baker Museum, Florida Contemporary, Naples, FL Lazarides, Marcus Jansen, Whistleblower, London,UK. 2013 Boca Raton Museum of Art, All Florida, Boca Raton, FL Housatonic Museum of Art, “Eye on the Storm”, Bridgeport, CT 2012 Museum of Contemporary Art PERMM, Anonymous, PERMM, Russia 2011 Naples Museum of Art, Florida Contemporary, Naples, FL Absolut Vodka, New Generation of Artists, Sweden 2010 New Britain Museum of American Art, collection, New Britain, CT Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, collection, Kansas, MO 2009 International Convention Centre, Cape Town, South Africa FDIM Museum, Warner Brothers, Los Angeles, California 2008 Yeiser Art Center, Marcus Jansen, Paducah, Kentucky 2007 Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA), collection, Moscow, Russia National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, 12th Intl Print & Drawing, Biennial, Taiwan Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, 12th Intl Print & Drawing, Biennial, Taiwan 2006 Tampa Museum of Art, under/current/over/view 8 Biennial, Tampa, FL 2005 Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, Arts for Act, Florida 2004 Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, Arts for Act, Fort Myers, FL 2003 Charles H. Wright Museum, Ford Motor Company Paintings, Dearborn, Michigan 2002 Stricoff Fine Arts, Chelsea, NY 1999 Madison Square Garden, International Independent Film Festival, New York, NY 45
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Selected Museum Collections
Selected Press
Moscow Museum of Modern Art New Britain Museum of American Art Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art Housatonic Museum of Art
New York Times, US Artillery Magazine, US Rolling Stone Magazine, Italy La Repubblica Magazine, Italy Arte, Italy New American Paintings, US Cambridge University Press, UK Vanity Fair, Italy Whitewall Magazine, US Widewalls, Magazine, CH Handelsblatt, Germany Rheinische Post, Germany Wall Street International SĂźddeutsche Zeitung, Germany Kunstzeitung, Lindinger + Schmid Art Profil, Germany Arttribune, Italy Strife Journal, UK ESPOARTE, Italy Arte Fuse, US Schon, Magazine. UK KULT Magazine, Italy Malibu Arts Review, CA Exibart, Italy Aesthetica Magazine, York, UK Lodown Magazine, Germany
Selected Corporate Commissions 2012 Absolut Vodka, Sweden 2011 Illuminum Perfume, UK 2010 FIFA World Cup TM, Africa 2008 Warner Brothers, USA 2003 Ford Motor Company, USA Selected Private Collections John and Amy Phelan Anthony Carmello Dieter Rampl Bebe and Crosby Kemper Arthur M Winn Mark Gyetvay John Ortiz Peggy Cooper-Cafritz Documentary Film Marcus Jansen - Examine and Report A documentary Film by Emmy Award winning filmmaker John Scoular Selected International Art Fairs
2018 Art Miami, Casterline Goodman Gallery, Art Basel Miami Beach 2018 Art New York, Lichtfeld Gallery 2018 Art Chicago, Casterline Goodman Gallery 2017 Art Karlsruhe, Galerie Kellermann 2016 Art Verona, Galeria Bianca Maria Rizzi and Matthias Ritter 2014 Art 14, London, Lazarides Gallery
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply grateful to everyone who participated in making this exhibition a reality, especially Marcus Jansen. Special thanks to Wissam Elghoul, Victor Llaguno, Melissa Tye and Mary Ellen Cooper. The design of this catalog would not have been possible without the creative spirit, dedication and patience of Alexis Serrins and late night cover design by Lazlo Hagmasi. The fortitude shown by John Kirkendall during the installation of this exhibition deserves special recognition.
To my husband David, thank you for your forbearance of the numerous late nights and midnight texts leading up to the opening and for always being my true north. ...Lisa Burgess A special thanks to Lisa and her staff, my old friend Jim Leger from Michi’s Arts and Craft who made sure all canvases were ready on time for project deadlines and of course to my loving fiancé Sabrina Gruber, my two boys Elias and Dominic, Lauren Morales, Christine Gruber for the best team work as usual as well as Elaine and Toni Gulati for your years of support. ...Marcus Jansen
Also a thank you to the South West Florida Community Foundation in Fort Myers and the Marcus Jansen Foundation Fund at www.marcusjansenfoundation.org. Let’s make a difference.
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