Jeremy Jaspers. A Special Beauty

 

Thomas Fuchs spoke with Jeremy Jaspers about the works in the exhibition.

 

TF: Jeremy, when we visited you in your Paris studio in May, we were particularly impressed by your works, which you describe as "portraits of a special beauty".

 

JJ: That's one of the things that fascinates me about this subject. They are inescapable. It's impossible for us not to look at them. And of course that does something to us, but above all to what we look at.

 

TF: How did you come to this topic?

 

JJ: In a way, the theme came to me. During my preparations for my exhibition in New York in 2022, I was talking to a friend about my work. This friend has severe vitiligo, a pigment disorder that causes white patches on the skin. At one of our meetings he said: "Do you know that I have never seen anyone like me, anyone with my skin on a painting? The museums are full of paintings from all centuries, but I've never seen a person with vitiligo anywhere." I could only agree with him, I wasn't aware of any paintings either. And when he asked me if I would like to paint a portrait of him, I said yes. At the time, I had no idea that this would set the ball rolling. But the more I got involved with this subject, the more exciting it became and it is now an essential part of my work.

 

TF: What particularly interested you about this topic?

 

JJ: There are many aspects that gradually revealed themselves to me. Initially, I was fascinated by the very special aesthetics of this skin. Every time I saw someone with vitiligo, it was so confusing, strange and fascinating at the same time, and also so beautiful. This is of course a great subject for a painter. Then the question arose in me as to what it actually means for a person to be aware of being constantly stared at.

 

TF: That must be quite a burden.

 

JJ: Yes, it's a big point of vulnerability. It's a topic that's very high on my agenda. I try to find the sore spots because I believe that our "weaknesses" is a fundamental part of our humanity.

 

TF: We encounter the sensitivity and fragility of the man in particular in many of your paintings.

 

JJ: Absolutely! It's a core theme of my work. And so in this case, too, I wanted to know how someone who is constantly being looked at looks at the world. Do they try to avoid the stares, do they withdraw into themselves, do they become aggressive or do they develop a particularly strong self-confidence? While I was working on various portraits, I remembered situations in which I felt like I was being watched or looked through. Moments when I entered a room, for example, and had the feeling that everyone was staring at me, that everyone knew what was wrong with me. As a boy who knew from an early age that he was attracted to his own gender, this feeling was a frequent companion. I felt as if all of this was visible on my skin for all to see. This childhood memory brought me closer to "being stained", to stained skin on an experienced level.

 

TF: At this point, this topic also picked you up autobiographically.

 

JJ: Of course that was a strong trigger point! But I also realized during the work that there are much more general fundamental questions to ask. One of the first was the question "What does skin color mean?". For whom is it important? This topic has become increasingly important in recent years. Wouldn't it be a wonderful solution if we were all multicolored? I liked this utopia more and more the more works I created on this subject. Why do we find it so difficult to accept what is different? What fear lies behind this? And what simply comes from a confused ideology? Why is a white person of color still not white? It is quite clear that skin color is not a choice. Neither is sexual orientation. This can all be wonderfully transferred to other subjects: as the artist Herbert Grönemeyer, whom I greatly appreciate, asked in one of his songs "When is a man a man?"

 

TF: "We're already trained to be men as children!" That's exactly one of your themes, isn't it!

 

JJ: Absolutely! Who judges us, who actually tells us what is beautiful and how we should be. We realize that this dictate is very unhealthy the moment we break out of the "norm". I am glad that there is now some movement on this front. Encrusted gender norms are being broken down and the pennies are starting to drop. That should also be our goal when it comes to "color"! I was recently very pleased to hear from a collector that his own perception has changed as a result of the paintings. He now realizes how often he encounters vitiligo in his everyday life and that the more he opens himself up to this perception, the more an inner naturalness sets in. The people he had initially encountered in a rather bashful, voyeuristic manner were transformed into something familiar, which he now encounters with an open mind and as a matter of course. In other words, the viewer himself has been changed in the way he looks at things. This is precisely why it is so important for me to paint these subjects. Not to negate differentness, but to show it as beauty. Diversity is enriching.