OFLUXO

The relationship between subject and object, which for the longest time was based on the presumption of stable relations, is no exception. In practical and ontological terms, the relationship was previously arranged into two spheres: People are people, and things are things. The upshot: people use things. While a pair of trousers that dances around a street bollard as if by itself reinforces the probability of an inverted hierarchy of power: Surely man is more dependent on his things than the other way around? Thilo Jenssen’s Screenshot Paintings are manifestations of sequences of digital aids for the body. Automated emergency calls, repetitive alarms and idyllic lock screens are applied to the canvas by means of UV printing, only to dissolve again through abrasion in a dialogue between dystopia and utopia. Jenssen’s tin paintings challenge similar regulatory structures for intersubjective systems of power and support. Alongside monochrome surfaces, they show theatrically staged situations between safety and control; the depictions come from the artist’s archive of first aid instructions, compiled over years. The distance between the dramaturgy of the image and the reality of the subject depicted alludes to an awareness of the fragility and dependence of the human body. This is contrasted by the physical brutality of the ground to the image: monochrome lacquer, contoured and rendered rhythmic by traces of sweat strongly suggests references to Colour Field Painting and Minimal Art. Yet the paintings, which make their raw materials and the processuality of the mechanisms of their production obvious, transgressing their medial boundaries and revealing not only their photographic quality but also a sculptural quality. How meaningful are categories anymore? With this in the background, the exhibition UPPERS AND DOWNERS is a unique antidote to all the limitations of everyday life.

 

— Teresa Kamencek