“Can a photographic image have a picturesque complexity?” Inspired by this thought, Jannemarein Renout (b. 1969, Monnickendam, NL) explores and questions everyday life with all its absurdity and vulnerability. The ongoing art project Looking Is Touching shows Jannemarein’s photographic and painterly investigation into her father’s identity. A few years ago her father questioned his identity and captured his search for himself in dozens of photos. The subjects vary from self-portraits and his daily breakfast, lunch and dinner, to objects that he collected over the years. This immense photo archive is an inexhaustible source for both Jannemarein’s quest and that of her father. In addition to the personal images, she shows enlarged short letters and notes that he has written. His incipient dementia becomes visible between the lines.
Jannemarein Renout’s artworks trigger the viewer because they cannot be categorized. She plays with both media in an intuitive way. Jannemarein approaches painting from a photography background and vice versa. “I try to apply the complexity of the discourse of painting through photography.”
Jannemarein is mostly known for her series of ‘renographies’, in which she hacked flatbed scanners in order to scan the daylight. Recently, she made the move from scanners to printers. The process of photo printing attracts her because of the possibilities of reproduction, as the manual process that creates the image. “I see the printer as my brush.” With a huge printer, she prints on canvas, layer upon layer, washing the canvas and printing over it again. This process results in a painterly artwork, without her having touched a single brush. With this she is the director of chance and coincidence, but the device is creating the image.
• Looking Is Touching is on view together with Silent White by Jeppe Lauge.
• More about Jannemarein Renout.
Special Events
Friday, 03.09.2021: 17.00 / 21.00 • Opening Gallery Season.
Saturday, 04.09.2021: 11.00 / 18.00 • Opening Gallery Season.
Sunday, 05.09.2021: 11.00 / 18.00 • Opening Gallery Season.
You are welcome to join us for the opening of Looking is Touching during the Opening of the Gallery Season, which will happen together with the opening of Silent White by Jeppe Lauge.
