"Art invites us to intellectual consideration, and that, not for the purpose of creating art again, but for knowing philosophically what art is."  

Georg W. F. Hegel

 

What is the purpose of the artist in a time when everyone out there is an artist? Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube — anyone and everyone with access can express oneself in the blink of an eye to a niche audience or even wake up one morning to a viral hit. Does this kind of expression though drive current issues that stick out and having a durabilty beyond the 15 minutes of fame, or is it just a mere consumerist regurgitation by which anything goes — tame; easily digestible? Visual artist Jens Joneleit takes a particular point of view. Surprising himself and his viewers, Jens Joneleit explores current issues through discontinuity — creating works that defy cohesion, and thus become cohesive. With each new series he creates on canvas, paper or wood, he engages in a total re-evaluation — confronting the storm of possibilities, keeping his ego in check and creating works that stand alone trying to unify the un-unifiable. With the erasure of boundaries in today’s world defined by ways and means of the information super-highway, Jens Joneleit reflects that idea with pursuing the impossible, creating chances while also, at times, facing the risk of failure. Never growing bored nor giving up nor using failure as an easy escape route, the perpetually-changing thus discontinuous visual vocabulary of Jens Joneleit brings to mind upon viewing new differentiated forms of mediating powers within current issues of contemporary art. Shifting his visual approach from one series to another, Jens Joneleit offers works that may define a different perspective. Quite simply, Post-Modernism, with its constant borrowing, mashing, sampling and appropriating, has exhausted itself and stands at a twilight — especially since these creation-processes are being repeated over and over by billions of internet users around the globe. By not appropriating content of any hard nor even a virtual reality, nor taking in inventory of representational and iconographic information, Jens Joneleit embraces new visual languages confronting his own perception and today’s quickly changing Zeitgeist. To charge his vision, Jens Joneleit searches and stretches the boundaries with his creative vigor, committing to his own critical assessment that asks him to continually change. Taking already existing content, deconstructing it, and re-designing it, is not really a contribution to authentic unknown things. On the contrary, Jens Joneleit understands from experience that new content can only be generated; when not just content is changed but also its creation processes — changed constantly and perpetually. With generating experiences, not messages, Jens Joneleit never has to ask if his art is political, because he believes that all art is — an unpredictable puzzle or a paradox perhaps but most of all, a surprise for himself and his viewers in the quest of contributing to a change of a ubiquitous understanding.