Jansson Stegner, Dig me no Grave
May 6 – June 11, 2005
Mike Weiss Gallery is pleased to announce Jansson Stegner’s first solo exhibition. Stegner’s fantastic and implausible narratives unfold in vast and lush landscapes that allude to 18th and 19th century Romantic and Neo-Classical history painting. His inventive and enigmatic scenes subvert our sense of reality and play with our expectations of right and wrong. By pitting boyish highway patrolmen against nondescript, khaki-clad youth, Stegner blurs the lines between protagonist and antagonist and challenges the viewer’s preconceptions of heroism, violence and authority. The overt sex and violence references the battle scenes and bacchanalia taken from art history, as well as more contemporary influences, such as the art of Frank Franzetta and TV shows like CHiPs and C.O.P.S.
In Stegner’s depictions there is no clear cut differentiation between the “good guys and the bad guys” and the roles are distorted and unclear. Both cops and civilians appear awkward and vulnerable, and equally prone to engage in absurd acts of violence. The paintings send mixed messages of power and authority and mirror the same confused states that exist within contemporary society. The strangeness of these scenes is enhanced by the remote landscape settings, in which there are no signs of modern civilization.
The portraits have a more intimate quality, providing the artist with an opportunity to explore the psychological interior of his subjects, in a way that recalls the work of Otto Dix and early Lucian Freud. Stegner has also been influenced by the strange, sometimes violent subjects in Goya’s paintings and prints, El Greco’s mannered exaggerations of the figure and George Catlin’s paintings of Native Americans in the Old West. Stegner’s interest in these artists is also reflected in his love and mastery of painterly brushwork, however he uses his own paintings to document a contradictory world of violence and beauty.