LC: The exhibition also features two collages that seem to make up a diptych. One of them shows a painter at his easel, in front of a blank canvas. The other is of a woman in the woods. Is the painter a self-portrait?
PJ: It’s more an archetypal image, but one that expresses everything I stand for. The second collage features a pregnant woman walking in the forest with several men hiding behind the trees. When my girlfriend was pregnant, I was fascinated by the changes in her body as it became balloon shaped and a lot of fun to draw and paint using big circular objects as models.

LC: Your characters are incorporated in a rather curious way in your landscapes, as if they were set decors, almost like in a theatre.
PJ: I have a great affection for medieval illuminated miniatures, which, despite their realism, often feel orchestrated like stage or theater sets. Perspective, while certainly present, is a minor aspect of the image as a whole. When I was an art student, I gained access to various heritage libraries to browse these medieval books and examine these miniatures in close up, without protective glass. In my particular case, I need reality to be able to create a painting, but the painting doesn’t need to reflect this reality.

Pieter Jennes’ art is narrative in nature and his means of expression—richly colored surfaces and dense motifs in particular—are akin to illustration. The style of his work, refined by historical references to the flat perspectives of Islamic miniatures for example, or the satirical aspects of Weimar-era artists such as Georg Grosz as well as the face-to-face aspect of theatre, lend his painting a profoundly idealistic slant. The world he depicts, is set at the crossroads of the everyday and the dreamlike, a fundamentally familiar setting where dreams branch off from the ordinary. His creatures, both human and animal, still or in movement, set in landscapes that are reduced to a patchwork of patterns and textures are imbued with a variety of human emotions that range from the simplest to the most complex. Love melancholy, desire, fear… The primacy of somatic feeling is essential in Pieter Jennes’ work both in the highly tactile visual dimension of the artworks and in the moments of contact between the living beings he represents.

Born in 1990 in Mortsel, Belgium, Pieter Jennes lives and works in Antwerp. He studied painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, as well as curatorial studies at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts & University of Gent. He has exhibited work in numerous galleries—Nino Mier Gallery (New York / Los Angeles), the Sofie Van de Velde Gallery (Antwerp), the Vacancy Gallery (Shanghai / Seoul), the PUBLIC Gallery (London)—as well as at art fairs both in Belgium and on the international stage.