Research Fields

Cyclical movements and cycles of becoming and passing are manifold in the history of art, its subjects and material traditions. Jens Rausch uses the motif of the sunflower to unravel active vanitas processes and dedicates his series of works of the experimental fields to an extraordinary interweaving of motif history and transformative material dynamics. In his artistic experiments, Jens Rausch decodes complex structures with basic means and creates a special memento mori with ephemeral means characterized by chance and transformation processes.

The focus is on the interwoven processes that result from the combination of the artistic material, chance, temporality, processuality, Rausch's artistic dialog with the work and its title. The repertoire of materials oscillates between fire, organic extracts from sunflowers and oxidizing materials. Similar to the motifs characterized by morbidity, the active processuality of the materials is also intrinsic. In dealing with them, Rausch assumes a non-hierarchical attribution of value to the materials. Both the positive and negative design elements of painting are among his motivic and stylistic means. This can be seen just as impressively in the painted imperfection as, for example, in the formation of pictorial components through accidental oxidation.

With the formation of anti-space as a new cycle between energy production and combustion, between becoming and passing away, the painter draws a material iconographic link to the art and cultural-historical models of Dutch still life painting as well as the motif language of Vincent Van Gogh. His fundamental investigations into the material raise the significance of vanitas in remembrance of finiteness to a new dimension, in that the signs of transience lead to a breaking through of tradition, which manifests itself in Jens Rausch's open-ended joy of experimentation.

Ina Jessen