Jeanne Jacob (*1994, lives and works in Biel)
Rien ne me sépare de la merde qui m’entoure – Salut virginie, 2020
Oil on canvas, 140 x 120 cm
Jeanne Jacob works intuitively and spontaneously, allowing the result to develop freely during the creative process. Her work, which is characterised by an immediate and honest approach, deals with the body, sexuality and gender. The artist holds up a mirror to the audience and unabashedly addresses the most hidden areas of intimacy. With benevolent irony, she expresses repressed fantasies and desires with all their ideals and contradictions. The work Rien ne me sépare de la merde qui m’entoure – Salut virginie is named after a text by the feminist writer Virginie Despentes, which the artist had read during a seminar by the philosopher Paul B. Preciado at the Centre Pompidou. The event presented itself as a collective and militant reflection on the overthrow of patriarchal and colonial infrastructures.
Inside, 2020
Oil on canvas, 110 x 140 cm
der Reiter und sein Pferd, 2020
Oil on painting board, 50 x 50 cm
Selflove, 2020
Oil on painting board, 40 x 30 cm
Frenchkiss, 2019
Oil on canvas, 180 x 140 cm
Bouquet de fleurs, 2019
Oil on canvas, 130 x 100 cm
tête dans le cul, 2019
Oil on painting board, 40 x 30 cm
Jeanne Jacob’s artistic work mainly comprises painting, performance and drawing. Her work is shaped by her active political engagement and life in collectives, and is inspired by queer feminist theories and contemporary sociology. She regularly works in collaboration with other artists. Jacob paints people and bodies captured alone or in pairs or small groups in an everyday matter-of-factness. Often surrounded and protected by an innocent depiction of nature, the figures fill the picture plane, creating an immediate intimacy with their counterparts. Sensual and intimate, tender and untameable, comic and vulnerable, they are in a kind of limbo where ideals are subverted and contradictions are possible. To let the images take effect, one must allow oneself to be penetrated by the angular beauty of the figures, the honesty of their bodies and their memories.
For the presentation at the Kunsthaus as part of this year’s Prix Kunstverein, Jeanne Jacob will be showing a group of works from 2019 and 2020 that offer an insight into current themes as well as the development of the artist’s painting style. Possible narratives are suggested by a rider and his horse, by a luminous bouquet of flowers between two people, or by a wolf lurking in the shadows. The execution ranges from a reduced palette to strong contrasts between light and dark to saturated colours. Jacob plays with the expressive possibilities of strong line drawings, but also obviously enjoys the painterly-gestural creation of images. Milky, veil-like layers of colour confuse the boundaries between inside and outside and give her figures a second skin. This ambiguity is evident in other works through the merging of face and body.
Jeanne Jacob was born in 1994 in Neuchâtel, she lives and works in Biel. After completing the preliminary course at the School of Design in Biel (2014), she completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Lucerne School of Art and Design, where she was awarded the Zeugindesign Foundation’s promotional prize for her diploma thesis (2019). Jeanne Jacob exhibited at various porn festivals: at the «Lust_Art» of Luststreifen in Basel and at the queerfeminist porn festival Schamlos! in Bern. In February 2020, she presented a solo exhibition entitled «Looking for Love» at the Breeder Gallery in Athens as part of the Queer Archive, in which she thematised romantic preferences and standards. In summer 2020, Jeanne Jacob was invited to respond to selected works from the Kunsthaus Pasquart collection in the exhibition Kaléidoscope. With Mirjam Ayla Zürcher, she realised a project as a duo: «J’ai des privilèges, donc je peux», an installation with text and video, which was shown at the Kunsthalle Luzern in October 2020.
With the Prix Kunstverein 2020, Jeanne Jacob receives a support grant of CHF 5000 for the development of her work.
Text: Felicity Lunn, Director Kunsthaus Pasquart
Jeanne Jacob is participating in the initiative «artist takeover» of our Instagram-Account:
#artisttakeover on 10.3.2021
