Bruno Jakob: Hovering and Pulsing

Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zahnradstrasse, Zurich

The exhibition title Hovering and Pulsing refers to Jakob’s new work, a photographic documentation from 2014. It depicts a performance of the artist on the remains of the burnt down house of his parents in Aarburg, Switzerland. 

 

The earliest exhibited works are from 1986, three years after Jakob moved to New York. The paper works are figurative and abstract at the same time and are precisely dated to the day on the back. The artist sketched every day for a period of three months and is showing a selection from the month of April 1986 in the exhibition. He depicts everyday moments both indoors and out. Although the sketches have a figurative character the artist describes them as Invisible Paintings because they are preliminary sketches for large formats which according to Jakob exist as “pictures in the head”. The drawings are of different sizes and are individually cut.

 

An early installation work can be seen in the middle of the exhibition space. Happy Nothing: Still Collecting (1990-98) consists of four tables, upon which are spread two paintings on canvas and 29 paintings on paper in various formats. The installation was shown for the first time in 1998 at the trailblazing group exhibition “Freie Sicht aufs Mittelmeer“, curated by Bice Curiger & Juri Steiner, at Kunsthaus Zurich and recently in a solo exhibition at the Kolumba, Cologne. The water, without pigment but thought as colour, makes waves in the thin paper and leaves an elusive picture which, as the artist says, “is given back to the atmosphere drying”. The paper itself becomes the actual conveyor of expression, and the different types of white and the materiality of the various sheets essentially determine the effect of the picture. Jakob’s pictures are the result of his intensive concern with the process of painting and deliberations about painting using painterly means (meta-painting). The artist himself describes his pictures as Invisible Paintings/Drawings. A painter without paints - only pure water without pigments is used. And as the title Still Collecting reveals, a further element is added to the installation. A fifth table with a black slate slab laid upon it joins the ensemble for this exhibition. This “work in progress” stands in relation to the artist’s Fluid Performance on the opening evening.

 

Since the late 70s Jakob has been concerned with the idea of the invisible, incomplete, provisional, precarious and ephemeral - aspects which have remained part of his painting until now. The titles of the paintings play a central role here because they contain narrative elements. They remind the viewer that although he is confronted with the two-dimensionality of the canvas, the figurativeness behind it should not be forgotten - or put another way: it is painting and simultaneously “meta-painting”. The series Philosophy Escaped (1999) can be integrated into this idea. His interest in painting as illusion and in the painted picture as illusory space is well demonstrated here and he gives the viewer the chance to produce his own picture. The title of the painting and details about its production process trigger inner pictures which follow their own rules. The work group Flesh Net (1995, installation with 2 canvases, 1 canvas panel, 1 photograph (framed), 1 paper work (framed)) fits into this concept of art because all the materials are charged with energy by the artist and their apparently untreated surfaces point to the illusion of painting.