Sergej Jensen

Since the mid-1990s, Sergej Jensen (b. 1971) has been offering one of the most remarkable responses to the question of what painting can still be today. Painting in the classical sense plays only a minor role: in lieu of canvas, Jensen uses jute, coarse cotton, and jeans. He incorporates spots on fabrics which turn the “expressive gesture” of his paintings into a sign of wear from real life. Jensen’s paintings are always at the edge of the abyss, but they do not fall in. Their brokenness is compensated by delicate sensual gestures—their decay and dirt, by an almost decorative beauty. Jensen operates within the narrow range between authenticity and fake, between punk and pose.

Texts by Peter Eleey, Helmut Draxler, Jacob Fabricius, Rainald Goetz, Dirk von Lowtzow, Melanie Ohnemus, Susanne Pfeffer, and Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson. 220 x 295 mm, German / English, 300 pages, Flexcover, ISBN 978-3-942405-06-5. Available via MoMA PS1 and Distanz Verlag