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Jan-Ole Schiemann
Zig Zag Wanderer
Jan-Ole Schiemann titles his new series of 50 original hand-printed linocuts for Provinz “Zig Zag Wanderer.” With this extraordinary series, the artist translates his characteristic visual language into a new medium for him—the linocut.
Schiemann uses this traditional printing technique as a further development of his complex image structures. The multi-layered compositions are based on an irregularly cut, simple grid. While plant-like fragments appear to proliferate behind it, calligraphic marks lie in front, rendered in bold colors, either in broad strokes or with strong contours and three-dimensionality. All the forms depicted are created, among other things, by the cutting technique typical of linocut, which uses a circular blade.
As in his paintings, Schiemann interweaves transparent layers, topographical traces, and graphic structures into an ambiguous space. Individual color reworkings are added to the interplay of the offset of the essentially static printing plates. With this process-oriented approach, Schiemann generates the almost inexhaustible variety of the “Zig Zag Wanderer” series—his largest series of coherent original prints to date.
The purpose of the zigzag pattern is to create rapid changes of direction. This increases reaction speed, simultaneously sows confusion, and expands the artist’s own artistic practice. Schiemann demonstrates how precisely and dynamically his pictorial worlds can be developed further—and that they can be translated into other media without losing any of their painterly poetry.
Jan-Ole Schiemann (born 1983, lives and works in Cologne) is one of the most influential painters of his generation. His works have been exhibited in Seoul, New York and Los Angeles, among other places, and are represented in important public and private collections, including The Bronx Museum (New York), Craig Robins Collection (Miami), Martin Z. Margulies Collection (Miami), The Marciano Collection (Los Angeles), Rubell Family Collection (Miami), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit), Oetker Family Collection (Berlin) and the Hort Family Collection (New York).
