Jan-Hendrik Pelz: Retrospective IV

In his show entitled "Retrospective IV", the artist Jan-Hendrik Pelz not only creates a monument to himself, but also to his fictitious great-grandfather named Jan Hendrik Pelz.

It is not only in painting that a single stroke sometimes counts. In the respective styles of the times his great-grandfather is said to have lived through, Pelz creates paintings that take us back in time at first glance and also thematise the perpetual search for the individual style of all artists.

In this exhibition, the artistic work goes far beyond the invention of images. The artist Jan-Hendrik Pelz, born in 1984, not only paints pictures that are based on artistic positions from the first half of the 20th century in their choice of motif, painting style and colour; he also invents the artist. He claims that the artist was his own hitherto little-known great-grandfather, Jan Hendrik Pelz (*1884) - born on 8 February with almost the same name as him.

This retrospective thus encompasses a creative phase of Jan-Hendrik Pelz (*1984) and at the same time the entire oeuvre of Jan Hendrik Pelz (*1884). The supposed confrontation of a work with his own life, with the course of time, with historical and political circumstances becomes here a confrontation with history. Jan-Hendrik Pelz invents an artist who experienced the hardships of the First World War and turned to abstraction after the Second World War; an artistic personality like many others, in the shadow of art history focussed on big names. He worked with great mischief on a 'historical' work, painting pictures in the style of the time, applying the paint in such a way that it cracked more quickly and also aged it artificially. All the works are dated twice, the first date is part of the title and claims the historical origin, the second is the actual date.

Museum institutions are always working with historical positions that are being rediscovered; they are actually looking for 'new' unseen material. The art-historical fun of invention also questions this fascination.

Last edited on 20.11.2024