Jasper Sebastian Stürup
Let the Dawn in
08 Oct – 14 Nov 2009
Let the Dawn in
October 8 – November 14, 2009
Jasper Sebastian Stürup’s new solo exhibition Let the Dawn in invites us inside a strange, puzzling and energetic universe where crooked and scintillating expressions illuminates and enriches the spectator.
Jasper Sebastian Stürup (b. 1969) graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1999 and have the last couple of years been living in New York, a stay that in many respects has had a big impact on his art. Let the Dawn in is his first solo exhibition in Copenhagen since moving to New York. The exhibition shows a range of his newest works ranging from drawing, watercolour, video, through to photography and diamond dust.
His delicate stroke and visual universe with its dubious characters, mutated figurations and sampled expressions are instantly recognizable, but the new works also display a strengthened reference to art history where more or less openly inspiration from various role models can be found while mixed with autobiographical elements. Amongst others he draws inspiration from Edward Munch, which is echoed in some of his drawings where the deep and hollow eye orbits lends the otherwise eyeless figures a penetrating expressiveness, hereby giving the otherwise empty faces a strong manifestation. Francisco Goya’s fantastic realism displayed in for example Los Caprichos is also echoed in JSS drawings, where fantasy shapes reality and depicts the destructive, obscure and nightmarish in a chaotic universe of subjectivity and objectivity, fact and fiction. Finally traces of surrealism can be found and especially Max Ernst’s peculiar and disturbing montages are relevant, but also James Ensor’s carnival-like and grotesque universe along with Rembrandt van Rijn’s more classical works on paper are to be found in JSS extremely concocted and yet supremely subjective and self referential expression. As a result several of the drawings display bodies in strange metamorphosis, fragmented objects, crystal-like formations, dogs, masks, skulls, obscure growths, clouds of fog and enveloping matter.
Besides the classical art historic influences JSS continuously draws upon inspiration from popular visual culture with references to rock, beat, film and legendary stars. This is evident in a series of works where the artist has experimented with a combination of fragile, illuminating colourful strokes and diamond dust.
The diamond dust acts as a three dimensional layer on top of the drawing where it glitters and reflects the light of the surrounding space. Shape and content hereby reflect each other as the different layers in the work and the combination of the various techniques and materials mimics the motifs extremely complex character. The layers in JSS works point toward the nature of memory encompassing subconscious planes, repressions and surreal possibilities of combination or infinite paths of association.
The same motive can be found in JSS watercolour works where the semitransparent layers of colour pigment fog the underlying delicate strokes, creating at subtle play between the visible and the hidden, and at the same time the watercolour adds an element of coincidence and unruliness. The poetry of the watercolours is amplified by the delicate strokes and the intimate touch with which JSS has created the works, elements which are also found in the photographs displayed at the exhibition along with the video Didn’t Anybody Tell Her. The photographs deal with the small displacements and oddities in our everyday surroundings which normally go by unsighted but through the artist’s curiosity are brought into focus and their beauty laid bare for the viewer to see. The video work shows the Sumida River in Tokyo upon which the white leaves of the cherry tree are gently swept along with the current while the rays of the sun plays on the surface of the water hitting the leaves and transforming them into shooting stars through flashes of light.
A dreamy and transient void is admitted into our world through the video work – Let The Dawn In through Jasper Sebastian Stürup’s work and for a short while let yourself be swept away into a strange and wonderful universe.