For EXPO Chicago 2023, Nino Mier Gallery will present a series of works by Belgian painter Pieter Jennes. The solo booth features a carnivalesque suite of new, large-scale paintings, smaller works on paper, and sculptures, on view at Navy Pier from April 13 – 16, 2023.
The compositions are staged theatrically, without clear distinctions between foreground and background. We witness humans disguise themselves as horses, men and birds falling from the sky, an umbrella-toting artist being struck by a hose, and flying horses, among other absurdist gestures that fall on the spectrum between tomfoolery and mischief. Jennes’ surfaces are heavily worked with rich oil paint, bringing to the suite a three dimensionality that fully manifests in a series of plush sculptures of dead—or drunk—birds.
Each painting in the presentation features a series of patchworked rectangles running parallel to the composition’s bottom edge. The rectangles reference the Game of Goose, the earliest commercially produced board game, imagined first in 15th century Italy as a chase game akin to Parcheesi. Humans and animals stand, float, and tumble above the rectangular blocks, represented with Jennes’ signature air of jouissance.
Jennes’ compositions are youthful and imaginative, evincing the pleasures and light-hearted tensions we feel when gathered for board game, among more consequential experiences. The works on display feature a range of allusions to historical events, often representing tragedy and disaster with a sense of charm, as many children’s games do (think, for instance, of Ring Around the Rosie, which responds to the Black Plague). world & image (2022) considers the infamous 1974 “Bulldozer Exhibition”—an unofficial exhibition in Soviet Moscow broken-up by government officers wielding water cannons and riding bulldozers. In a similar vein, Nothing Happened Here (2022) redresses The Horses of Bayeux, a sprawling late 11th century tapestry depicting the events of the 1066 Norman invasion of England. The horse motif reappears in, among other works, Bybeck Nightingale (2022), a portrait of the Queen of England’s racehorse.
Pieter Jennes (b. 1990, Mortsel, BE; lives and works in Antwerp, BE) studied painting at the Royal Academie of Fine Arts, Antwerp, as well as curatorial studies at the Royal Academie of Fine Arts & University of Gent. He has had solo exhibitions at institutions including Galleriy Sofie Van de Velde, Antwerp, BE; The White House Gallery, Lovenjoel, Belgium; BE PART, Belgium; and Public Gallery, London, UK.