Jeroen Nelemans
"The Serial Portrait"
Aug. 21 - Sep. 29, 2023
Exhibition Statement:
"The Serial Portrait" is an exhibition by Jeroen Nelemans with two series that delve into the intersection of time, medium, (digital) space, and their connection to identity.
"I See You Too, Young Bear" captures the essence of early 2000s digital culture with screenshots from a video chat program. Resurfacing after 20 years, I photographed these screenshots of my younger self with a flash on my computer screen in order to reclaim them as a self-portrait series.
"The Serial Portrait" draws from Google Art Project, a digital platform launched in 2011, featuring images from global museums of their collections. In 2013, when its popularity surged and image quality enhanced, I felt compelled to utilize this new art experiencing platform as source material. I collected nine high resolution images of artworks depicting a physical interaction between two naked men. I found a connection in the concealed identities and the masked nature of the physical gesture. Ten years later, these became the subject through a means of image transfer, a craft technique that allows ink to move from paper to wood. This analog collaging mirrored Photoshop鈥檚 essence, as I am physically cutting, copying, and pasting the ink of an image onto the board. Printed images of body parts made from different times and mediums now come together as a consistent yet evolving self-portrait series, reflecting the mutable nature of identity.
About the artist:
Jeroen Nelemans (b 1974, the Netherlands) lives and works in Salina. Nelemans recently moved to Salina where he currently serves as Assistant Full Time Professor in Graphic Design. Previously, he worked as a part-time instructor at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago and Alta College in Chicago. In addition to teaching, Nelemans is a visual artist who works in a variety of mediums. Nelemans has shown at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, the De la Cruz Collection Contemporary Space in Miami, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Greece, and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids. His video works have also been screened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami; the Banff Center in Canada; the Werkleitz Centre for Media Art, Halle, Germany; Magmart International VideoArt Festival, Napoli, Italy; V-kunst: video und medienkunst, Frankfurt, Germany; 25th Festival Les Instant Video, Marseille, France; and the Kortfilm festival in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Nelemans received a Full Merit Scholarship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and completed his MFA in 2007. He has also attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Santa Fe Art Institute, Jentel residency in Wyoming, and the Fountainhead residency in Miami. In 2023, he received a Koch Cultural Trust Grant and a Horizon Enrichment Grant.