Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Gregory Jacobsen’s Repulsive, Vibrant Narratives

Gregory Jacobsen’s unsettling, vivid oil paintings offer portraits, scenes, and bizarre explorations of the most unflattering aspects of our anatomy. The Chicago-based artist sometimes abandon the figurative, instead offering a vague, writhing mash-up of organic materials. All are rooted in the artist’s fixations and sense of humor.

Gregory Jacobsen’s unsettling, vivid oil paintings offer portraits, scenes, and bizarre explorations of the most unflattering aspects of our anatomy. The Chicago-based artist sometimes abandon the figurative, instead offering a vague, writhing mash-up of organic materials. All are rooted in the artist’s fixations and sense of humor.

“I paint figures, focusing on the little bits that obsess me…a little flab hanging over a waistband, ill-fitting shoes, overbites, noses, teeth, and flesh,” the artist says, in a statement. “Either through portraiture or busy tableaux, I create a world and vocabulary of characters that live and embrace their so-called faults. Over the years, this work has developed into piles that are corpulent and visceral stand-ins for characters. Meat, junk, pasties, and genital-like fruit and vegetables are constructed into heroic yet pathetic towers. These piles also act as a sort of forensic evidence and cataloging of awkward sex, gross gluttony, ridiculous masturbation rituals, and endless humiliation and failure.”

See more work from Jacobsen below.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Berlin-based American artist James Bullough splinters and fractures hyper-realistic paintings of women to open spaces through which complex and unfinished stories are revealed. The vibrancy of skin tone and naturalistic musculature in Bullough's technique were learned through an intensive study of Old Master paintings. Bullough's interest in Old Masters is also evident in the way in which several of his nude subjects stare at the viewer, while taking care to keep their faces at least partially concealed.
Cuban artist Alexi Torres crafts oil paintings that appear as though they're woven, tethering both contemporary iconography and human subjects. In the artist’s portraits, the effect hints at the complexity of these figures; in his broader, more cultural works, the style hints at how so much of our interests and icons are tethered. His process is multi-layered, intricately taking the familiar and adding his “knitted” sensibility.
Themes of science and introspection permeate throughout the oil paintings created by Romanian artist Victor Fota. His current body of work, “Human Extension,” progresses those ideas by exploring relationships between man and machine. The result is a surreal experience entangled in reality and science fiction.
As a young girl, artist Margaret Bowland's favorite books and songs told stories about love and life, stories that condition girls to expect certain things out of life and want to be a certain way. Ideas about love, beauty, and personal identity are at the heart of her 19th century-inspired oil paintings, covered here. In particular, her portraits often feature the same African American girl named "J", grandly styled with her face painted white, and attended to by white servants. She makes a reappearance in Bowland's upcoming exhibition at Driscoll Babcock in New York, "Power".

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List