Jarik Jongman

Profile/CV

A former assistant of Anselm Kiefer, Jarik Jongman uses both his own photographs and anonymous pictures found in flea markets, books, magazines and the internet as a starting point for his work, which often deals with archetypical imagery.

The “phenomena” depicted in his ongoing series of paintings of motel rooms are metaphysical in nature, that is to say, they appear as ghostly clouds or flashes of mysterious light.

To paraphrase Werner Heisenberg: ‘What we observe is not reality itself but reality exposed to our method of questioning’. 

The physical universe, then, is a kind of language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it, although this does not yield a single message so much as a superior network of associations. His paintings are not allegories, intended to represent; they are instead intended to evoke particular states of mind.

Moreover, his motel rooms allude to the transience of existence. The temporary dwelling place, both for man in his individual life and as a species in this universe, in which we are merely (?) a brief flash of light.