Jeremy Demester, 2023

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Jeremy Demester

Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London
Holzwarth Publications, Berlin 2023
With text by Jean-Marie Gallais

A new publication documenting three of Jeremy Demester’s exhibitions at Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin and London since 2020, as well as his 2021 exhibition at the Fondation Zinsou in Ouidah.

Publisher: Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London / Holzwarth Publications, Berlin
Text: Jean-Marie Gallais
Publication date: 2023
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 30 x 24,5 x 2 cm
Pages: 167
ISBN: 978-3-947127-44-3

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Find the book here


XXI, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, aluminium frame195 × 130 cmframed: 237x 175 × 5 cm

Stela, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, stone, painted resin239 × 207 × 8 cm.

L.L., 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, stone, plexiglas, painted aluminium, steel183,5 × 238 × 7 cm.

Pascale, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, bronze, painted resin, steel248 × 166 × 17 cm.

Nana, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, carbon forged, bronze, aluminium, painted aluminium, steel240 × 166 × 34 cm

Djemy, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, bronze, aluminium206 × 133 × 22 cm

4 × 4, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, bronze, aluminium, painted aluminium, resine262 × 185 × 22 cm.

MDB, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, stone, aluminium, painted resin211 × 200 × 50 cm.

MIMI, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, stone, aluminium, painted aluminium, wood, resin, brass, plexiglass, steel137 × 200 × 7 cm.

HÔHÔ, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, painted aluminium249 × 159 × 9 cm.

TATA, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, bronze, painted aluminium, steelclosed: 180 × 94 × 12 cm.with frame: 211 × 126 × 12 cm.

21 Graces Altarpiece, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, bronze, painted aluminium, steelopen: 180 × 188 × 8 cmwith frame: 211 × 188 × 8 cm

21 Graces Altarpiece, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, bronze, painted aluminium, steelopen: 180 × 188 × 8 cmwith frame: 211 × 188 × 8 cm

21 Graces Altarpiece, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela II, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela III, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela IV, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela V, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela VI, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela VII, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela VIII, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela IX, 2023

XXI

Perrotin Dubai, DIFC, Gate Village, Building 5, Unit 1, Podium Level
February 28 - April 8, 2023

Perrotin is pleased to present XXI, the first solo exhibition in Dubai of French-Beninese artist Jeremy Demester, gathering unveiled works.

Jeremy Demester approaches his canvases with an eye for natural processes of imitation and representation. Through philosophical inquiry and an intuitive aesthetic, the artist seeks to reveal the subtle traces of forgotten myths in modern everyday perceptions. His art is influenced by protohistoric archaeology, mythologies from all societies, and global popular culture – a wide-ranging knowledge he inherited from his nomadic Romani origins.

Since the beginning of his career, Jeremy Demester has been painting skies and trees, two simple subjects drawn from nature, demonstrating its infinite powers of metamorphosis. His study of the sky’s manifold colors and nuances at different times of the day and the seasons led the painter to a profound colorist exploration. In The 21 Graces Altarpiece, a triptych containing the beautiful depiction of a blue hardwood, trees become a source for an infinity of forms: perpetually branching, continually creating themselves, firmly rooted in the earth, they bend and quiver in the wind, expressing all the nuances of stability and movement.

A story of movement and life also unfolds in the artist’s latest series Stela. Refusing the distinction between landscape and abstraction, the nine compositions synthesize several of the artist’s past works. Animated by violent colors, skies, trees, rain, and flames overlap and intermingle, rising from the earth to the sky. While our own eyes struggle through these clouds of shapes and colors, pairs of painted eyes staring straight ahead are the resting point in most of the paintings – reminiscent of the rudimentary signs placed at the rear of trucks warning drivers to be vigilant. In a mimetic process, these eyes speak to our own eyes, becoming our interlocutors amidst the uncanny presence emanating from the paintings. Their titles are nicknames that exist in every country, in all epochs – but their monolithic frontality signals that we are facing witnesses of ancestral ages.

The series Assembled Figures, a body of large-scale composite portraits created by augmenting the canvases with sculpted bas-reliefs, reinforces the feeling of an encounter with almost human hybrids. They connect Jeremy Demester’s practice to the first decades of panel painting and the centrality of frames during the Early Italian Renaissance. Affixed to the painted compositions, objects from ancient times or contemporary life are deformed or set in bronze, blending and converging to form the strangest pareidolia. Shells, fossils, ex-votos, rims, harpoons, an Olmec helmet, boxing gloves, and sneakers are gathered in a procession of wild figures, immobile like raised stones. Similar to totems, these works serve as receptacles for elements of our material culture – rich in meaning – deposited to create a network of basic references – what the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss called mythemes. By reproducing these objects, giving them a common harmony, and transforming them into expressive faces, the artist breeds new life into ancient, sometimes forgotten myths. Freed from historical chronology, the masks become mirrors of the world: they reveal that we ourselves are constituted by archetypal myths and trivial fragments of reality.

Like a feverish and dazzled vision after too many sleepless nights, the paintings lay bare the architecture of our actions – for in every gesture lies an intuition, and intuition is a state of mind that we cannot control. It comes from our ancestors, from the most distant humanity, from the buried knowledge of the forces of nature and the elements.

Courtesy the artist and Perrotin
Installation views and works: M3Studio
Texts: Marguerite Hennebelle
© Jeremy Demester


Ram Muay, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas70 7/8 × 59 in.180 × 150 cm.Two snakes dance in a pink blaze - bodies without heads or tails, their vertical undulation causing a burst of chaos, their movements driving up a vortex of flames, drips, and tremors, invading the space like an aurora borealis. Fires break into curves and counter-curves, forming infinite folds, cascades of drapery and obscure meanders. The eye strives to see what lurks behind this joyous, baroque combustion, and uncovers a hidden stability.

Belle Demeure, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas76 3/4 × 63 in.195 × 160 cm.

Notre Dame, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas70 7/8 × 59 in.180 × 150 cm.

Barles, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas63 × 47 1/4 in.160 × 120 cm.

Ram Muay, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas63 × 47 1/4 in.160 × 120 cm.

FTW #14, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas63 × 47 1/4 in.160 × 120 cm.

Equal Scale Plate #10, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas63 × 47 1/4 in.160 × 120 cm.

Times of Grace X, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas63 × 47 1/4 in.160 × 120 cm.

Cansaco, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas47 1/4 × 35 3/8 in.120 × 90 cm.

Fitzcarraldo, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas47 1/4 × 35 3/8 in.120 × 90 cm.

Amour 1, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, painted metal56 1/4 × 35 3/8 in.143 × 90 cm.

21, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas47 1/4 × 35 3/8 in.120 × 90 cm.

Le temps n’existe pas, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas47 1/4 × 35 3/8 in.120 × 90 cm.

Sun-Di, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

terracotta, sculpted and painted wood31 7/8 × 14 1/8 × 14 1/8 in.81 × 36 × 36 cm.

Nana, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

terracotta7 1/8 × 17 1/8 × 16 1/2 in.19 × 43.5 × 42 cm.

Scayri I, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

terracotta7 3/4 × 12 5/8 × 8 5/8 in.19.6 × 32 × 22 cm.

M.Y., 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

terracotta16 3/4 × 12 5/8 × 11 3/4 in.42.5 × 32 × 30 cm.

R.G., 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

terracotta18 1/4 × 15 3/4 × 16 1/2 in.46.5 × 40 × 42 cm.

Scayri II, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

terracotta26 3/8 × 15 1/8 × 12 5/8 in.67 × 38.5 × 32 cm.

Voyaga I, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

terracotta24 3/8 × 18 1/2 × 18 1/2 in.62 × 47 × 47 cm.

Voyaga II, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

terracotta10 5/8 × 12 5/8 × 12 5/8 in.27 × 32 × 32 cm.

Voyaga III, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

terracotta24 1/4 × 17 7/8 × 16 1/8 in.61.5 × 45.5 × 41 cm.

Voyaga IV, 2023

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Ram Muay

Galerie Max Hetzler, London
41 Dover Street, London W1S 4NS
19 January – 25 February 2023


The mystery of things – where is it?
Why doesn’t it come out
To show us at least that it’s mystery?
What do the river and the tree know about it?
And what do I, who am no more than they, know about

– Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa),
The Keeper of Sheep, XXXIX

Ram Muay is a ritual dance performed by muay Thai fighters prior to their bout, to pay respect to their teachers. The artist salutes his mentors, who put him on the path to mastery and grace. Jeremy Demester’s (b. 1988) exhibition embodies this gesture, visually translating the salutation into painting and ceramics.

At the root of this new series is a reflection on nature derived from the fantastic colours of Arnold Böcklin’s symbolist landscapes, Fernando Pessoa’s poem The Keeper of Sheep, Marguerite Yourcenar’s The Abyss or Colette’s Green Wheat and its sensual descriptions of the smells, colours and lights of Brittany.

Through literature, Demester finds delight and freedom in the face of nature: paying attention to delicate leaves, fragrant flowers, abundant fruits, and how closely we are interwoven with nature, united within a single substance. Literature and art are both the vessels of this harmony, and the doors through which we gain access to it.

Like guardians of the senses, large earthenware jars with organic and ageless shapes are poised to collect and spread the treasures offered by art and nature. Their own set of senses allows them to feel the paintings we look at, where patterns sprout and grow in multiple layers of vibrant colours, overlapping each other, bewildering the eye as it seeks depth.

As we move from canvas to canvas, a structure emerges; bodies appear and dissolve into abstraction; shapes and forces find balance in intuitive brushstrokes. We witness the genesis of a narrative, in which a struggle is resolved through eurhythmy.

In Ram Muay, Demester returns to figuration, marking a turning point in his practice and completing a cycle initiated in 2017 with Fire Walk With Me, a period of experimentation that took him to the most abstract frontiers of the landscape genre. This exhibition is a salutation after the fight.

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Ram Muay, 2022
acrylic on canvas
160 × 120 cm.; 63 × 47 1/4 in.

Hanuman, the divine monkey of the Hindu epic Ramayana, crosses an orange waterfall. Son of the wind god, he is endowed with the power of metamorphosis and moves lightly from peaks to forests, using nature to enact random miracles. Hanuman pierces the screen of perception and overcomes the human laws of perspective, thanks to his occult knowledge of landscapes. He catches the sun and eats it, displaces hills and leaps to the top of mountains. The painter, in front of his canvas, becomes a hybrid monkey-man, who, thrown into nature, perceives, fights, and recomposes the anarchic appearance of the world.

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Nana, 2023
terracotta, sculpted and painted wood
overall: 81 × 36 × 36 cm.; 31 7/8 × 14 1/8 × 14 1/8 in.

The simple, organic forms of the ceramics were fired using a traditional flamed technique, which leaves the surface of the clay uncovered. Nana is inspired by ancient Egyptian canopic jars, which were used to preserve the organs of the deceased and understood to watch over their owner during the afterlife. The vessels adorned with noses are a tribute to the painter’s literary influences: features which, as guardians of perception, are receptacles of the sensitive world and dispense its wonders. They probably smell the cigarette in Nana’s mouth – in the Romani tradition, smoke rising to the sky is a call to the dead.

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Belle Demeure, 2022
acrylic on canvas
195 × 160 cm.; 76 3/4 × 63 in.

Two snakes dance in a pink blaze - bodies without heads or tails, their vertical undulation causing a burst of chaos, their movements driving up a vortex of flames, drips, and tremors, invading the space like an aurora borealis. Fires break into curves and counter-curves, forming infinite folds, cascades of drapery and obscure meanders. The eye strives to see what lurks behind this joyous, baroque combustion, and uncovers a hidden stability.

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Sun-Di, 2022
acrylic on canvas
120 × 90 cm.; 47 1/4 × 35 3/8 in.

Sun-Di, meaning Full Moon in Fon, is the name of the artist’s house in Ouidah, Benin. In order to engage with the tradition of landscape painting, dictated by the symbolic reconstruction of the world, the artist chose a familiar perspective, an open window framing the lush vegetation of West Africa. The landscape shines through the frame, while forms and shadows blend in the background. With the light of the Moon, piercing the deep, Fauvist background, a fantastical vision appears in this most familiar, domestic setting. At nightfall, our perceptions are heightened. Distance, time, smells, solidity conform to new rules, and now is the time to paint.

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Cansaco, 2022
acrylic on canvas
160 × 120 cm.; 63 × 47 1/4 in.

A leaning silhouette is lost in a rain of colour, the saturated atmosphere of a dream where contradictory visions intermingle. In the crossing and overlapping drops, a rhythm can be distinguished, a cadence, a swaying from right to left, from top to bottom, five brushstrokes by five or six by six, as if Demester had caught himself dancing during his work. Becoming lost in the middle of the composition, the mind is saturated like loud music. This invasive landscape has the beauty of the duende, that terrible spell of flamenco artists, who allow age-old, universal suffering to travel through them in order to find the right energy in their singing.

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21, 2022
acrylic on canvas, painted metal
143 × 90 cm.; 56 1/4 × 35 3/8 in.

The number 21 crowns a tormented composition, from which a strange reptilian figure emerges. The goddess Kali emerges, linked to the artist’s Romani origins, who, according to Hindu mythologies, has 21 different forms. In perpetual metamorphosis, the goddess represents a violent and vital force. Emerging beyond a layer of highly contrasted dots, or halftones, Kali is the tumult, the crash of the world colliding with the limits of a frame. This imbalance is fertile: energy is generated by friction. Nature can be seen to constantly destroy itself, burning particles and breaking bonds. This is how movement is created and how it runs through life.

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Notre Dame, 2022
acrylic on canvas
195 × 160 cm.; 76 3/4 × 63 in.

An imposing presence emanates from Notre-Dame, where a vivid yonic form is monumentally framed, granting the sensation of standing at the threshold of a cave. The deep and dark blue, on which white and pink sparks emanate, evokes a nocturnal encounter of unsettling sensuality, perhaps it is a milestone in an initiatory pilgrimage of love. The undulating snakes echo Belle Demeure, creating a narrative progression between abstract landscapes, several states of consciousness, successive stages of a dream. A slow awakening to knowledge unfolds in front of us. In this hole of light, absorbing the eye, fruits, animal, and bodies merge. A blind and absolute force, nature proliferates, creates alternatives and continually generates power.

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | London | Paris
Installation views and works: Jack Hems
Texts: Marguerite Hennebelle
© Jeremy Demester


Djemy, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas94 1/2 × 78 3/4 in.240 × 200 cm.

Kalé yaka ké rovén, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, bronze and brass108 1/4 × 87 × 5 7/8 in.275 × 221 × 15 cm.

Kitemmuort, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas94 1/2 × 78 3/4 in.240 × 200 cm

Djemy II, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvaseach: 94 1/2 × 78 3/4 in.; 94 1/2 × 315 in.each: 240 × 200 cm.; overall: 240 × 800 cm.

Chorav eksera ritchya te dikav tu mé, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas94 1/2 × 78 3/4 in.240 × 200 cm

O douano patreto, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas94 1/2 × 78 3/4 in.240 × 200 cm.

Moro Pral, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas94 1/2 × 78 3/4 in.240 × 200 cm.

Joukli kali a havé o bershine, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas94 1/2 × 78 3/4 in.240 × 200 cm.

Le mange luludji, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas94 1/2 × 78 3/4 in.240 × 200 cm

O Kamnimos, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, resin, steel105 1/2 × 100 3/8 × 12 1/4 in.268 × 255 × 31 cm.

Kali, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas94 1/2 × 78 3/4 in.240 × 200 cm

To li yaka télé, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, bronze, brass, aluminium, steel103 1/8 × 78 3/4 × 5 1/4 in262 × 200 × 13.5 cm.

L’é dané sar chouri yaka perdo kamlimose, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

L’é dané sar chouri yaka perdo kamlimose (detail)

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas94 1/2 × 78 3/4 in.240 × 200 cm.

O gras papirosha, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, bronze, resin, aluminium133 1/8 × 78 3/4 × 11 3/4 in.338 × 200 × 30 cm.

Vasdav lai yaka dikav yirtco, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

Vasdav lai yaka dikav yirtco (detail)

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, resin, aluminium, brass, steel122 × 105 1/2 × 13 3/8 in.310 × 268 × 34 cm.;

Mozart Lélé, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

Mozart Lélé (detail)

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, bronze, brass, resin132 5/8 × 78 3/4 × 3 3/4 in.337 × 200 × 9.5 cm.

Je chante devant vous tous, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

Je chante devant vous tous (detail)

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, carbon forged, Venezuala green marble, aluminium121 1/4 × 104 3/8 × 5 7/8 in.308 × 265 × 15 cm.

Maymouna Kayachounel, 2022

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Djemy

Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin
Goethestraße 2/3, Berlin
29 April – 18 June 2022

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present Djemy, an exhibition of new works by Jeremy Demester, on view at Goethestraße 2/3, in Berlin. It is the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery. In this exhibition, the artist addresses his culture as a Tzigane, specifically of Kalderash Roma and Sinti origins. The term Tzigane will be used in the following text for clarity purposes; nevertheless, Tzigane people are not a homogeneous ethnic group. There are significant nuances in the traditions of each group and family, reflected in particular in the wide variations in their respective languages. The artist and his family have written a few words in Kalderash Romanes to introduce the exhibition:

To li yaka télé,
« Roraves ko roramno pes ané lesko poaré »,
A djes o mai zuralo Kai rovel anglal savorende,
Kanasi baro lanso konik nachtil poutreles,
Papirocha vai douano akarel lé gras.
Kana nai tou dan sumnakuné machti poutres o vudar Katar.
Kana roves assoi vai tchorat ké na kel a nétché vouni
ai tchorat kanaja langlé machtli avel pal palé,
Chorav eksera ritchya te dikav tu mé.


On the quest to explore his own roots, artist Jeremy Demester has followed the history of the Tzigane people, within Europe to Northern Africa, and onwards, working with a cartographer to draw a map of their known travels and migrations. The title of the present exhibition, Djemy, is his given name in Tzigane language, which uses a plurality of private and public names for a person. Leading on from the research into his own cultural roots, Demester has integrated Voodoo culture into his practice for years, as he lives and paints in Ouidah, Benin, where he establishedhis studio. The artist identified parallels between both cultures, engaging with Voodoo in order to understand his own roots more deeply.

The 15 works displayed in this exhibition are a new body of large-scale portraits, including an ambitious quadriptych unfolding over 8 metres. Some of these images of faces are not simply painted but are completed by the addition of materials such as marble, aluminium, bronze, resin, or carbon, which then form add-on elements such as eyes, ears and braided headdresses, giving the works a sculptural quality. They are mobile, attached to the outside of the original canvas, either by the sides, or above, and strengthen the presence of the works, to the extent that they seem animated. The additional elements are not planned, they are added to the paintings when Demester feels they are necessary for the overall balance. In this regard, he compares his practice to the initial intent of early Renaissance painters such as Fra Angelico (ca. 1395-1455) or Piero della Francesca (ca. 1410-1492), for whom the bas- relief frame of a painting (usually cropped from the images we see in literature), was as relevant as the composition.


Demester’s paintings are portraits of moments, rather than people:

[These paintings] are about experiencing how things can be gathered and merged into shapes. To take simple shapes, or just the two eyes, and to build figures. […] They are like portraits of moments, of time. They represent abstractions of the Voodoo and Tzigane cultures coming together. They are portraits of a whole people, a whole dynamic of things. They are protectors and witnesses of situations. […] And a lot of them are crying. They are crying but they are strong.


Moreover, through his experience decorating temples in Benin, Demester realised that in representation, image has more power than memory. The artist is aware of this immense strength, to the extent of being deeply moved by the paintings while working on them, and sees them as political emissaries, travelling the world from their origin in Benin.

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | London | Paris
Installation views and works: Holger Niehaus
Texts: La Demestria, Galerie Max Hetzler
© Jeremy Demester


The Book of Badji Rourou, 2022

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The Book of Badji Rourou I

Editions La Demestria, 2022

The Book of Badji Rourou is an artist’s book designed by Jeremy Demester, offering an intimate dive into the universe of a painter who left to seek his gypsy origins in West Africa. This visual adventure, punctuated by drawings, hidden works, studio details, archives or even paintings on the Ipad, reveals the whole range of references, stimuli, characters and moments constituting the visual and personal universe of the painter. Like a stolen phone we are able to discover the content, The Book of Badji Rourou is a self-portrait. This book is as much an autonomous object as a reading and reference guide for looking at the artist’s paintings.

The Book of Badji Rourou is a project of Jeremy Demester
Publisher: Editions La Demestria
Graphic design: Constanza Piaggio
Publication date: 2022
Binding: Heat-printed canvas cardboard cover
Dimensions: 21 x 13,5 x 3 cm
Pages: 320
ISBN: 978-2-9582379-0-5

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Hennessy, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on wood, bronze420 × 500 × 8 cm.Collection Patrimoine Hennessy

L’Ombre des Heures, le Retable du Temps, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on wood, bronze420 × 500 × 8 cm.Collection Patrimoine Hennessy

L’Ombre des Heures, le Retable du Temps, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

Bronze frame detail

L’Ombre des Heures, Le Retable du Temps

Hennessy cooperage workshop, Cognac
Inaugurated on March 31st, 2022, permanent installation

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L’Ombre des Heures, le Retable du Temps, 2021
oil and acrylic on wood, bronze,
420 × 500 × 8 cm.
Collection Patrimoine Hennessy

Le temps, la matière et le geste : L’Ombre des heures, Le Retable du temps de Jeremy Demester


« Entre force et douceur, la main trouve, et l’esprit répond. »
— Tchouang-tseu

Nos existences sont gouvernées par le passage cyclique du temps. Les années, les mois et les jours composent des cycles et des rythmes, auxquels chaque personne et chaque communauté peuvent donner du sens. Ce rythme du temps, ces cycles répétés, introduisent dans nos vies des ralentissements et des accélérations, nous indiquent des joies à venir ou nous remémorent des souvenirs passés, mettent en mouvement nos émotions comme dans une danse. Au XIVe siècle, les artistes flamands inventent un objet qui matérialise ce mouvement du temps : le retable à trois volets. Installé derrière l’autel d’une église, ou plus rarement dans un réfectoire, le retable est fermé la plus grande partie de l’année et donne à voir, chaque jour, une scène simple et austère en lien avec les cultes locaux. Mais quand arrivent les quelques fêtes importantes de l’année liturgique, l’habitant du village voisin ou le pèlerin qui vient de traverser de sombres forêts, tous deux peu coutumiers du luxe, se voient révéler la composition vivement colorée et parée d’or du retable grand ouvert, déployée largement sur les trois volets. L’effet de surnaturel est puissant. Ouvrir le retable, c’est dévoiler quelque chose qui se cache au cœur du temps long.

L’Ombre des heures, Le Retable du temps, n’est pas une œuvre religieuse, mais le quatrième retable à trois volets peint par Jeremy Demester pour un lieu spécifique et sa communauté. Installé en 2021, il occupe le mur du fond de l’atelier de tonnellerie de la Maison Hennessy, à Cognac. Les artisans qui passent désormais leurs journées en compagnie de cette œuvre ne se préoccupent pas des rythmes du culte chrétien ni du souvenir de temps immémoriaux, mais bien de considérations pratiques : la cadence de leur travail et la transmission de leur savoir- faire. « L’artiste est celui à qui il revient, à partir de nombreuses choses, d’en faire une seule et, à partir de la moindre partie d’une seule chose, de faire un monde », écrivait Rainer Maria Rilke1. Jeremy Demester est un de ces artistes attentifs à l’atmosphère qui fera vivre son œuvre. Avant de peindre, il a visité les ateliers de la Maison Hennessy et rencontré ses artisans, échangé longuement avec ceux qui poseront les yeux sur son travail chaque jour. Ce Retable du temps issu de rencontres, de paroles et de lieux, n’est donc pas, non plus, un simple élément de décoration pour l’atelier de tonnellerie ; sa stature – 4,20 m de haut – l’impose dans l’espace comme une porte monumentale, une véritable brèche vers un monde.

Demester entretient une proximité manifeste avec l’art ancien. Tout comme les artistes du xive siècle flamand, il introduit son retable dans notre monde matériel en l’encadrant d’éléments en relief. Autour du panneau central court une abondance de végétaux, des feuilles légères et toutes uniques, serrées en frise et comme fossilisées dans le bronze. Cette surface vivante, animée par les ombres et les lumières, est en apparence l’endroit le plus naturaliste de l’œuvre. Une subtile métamorphose s’y joue pourtant : l’œil se perd dans les branches et les racines, pour distinguer tout à coup des plumes, puis des écailles. Le matériau dans lequel s’est figée cettetransformation palpitante est tout aussi vivant. La fonte à la cire perdue, technique ancestrale encore pratiquée de façon traditionnelle dans la fonderie de Naples où travaille Demester, est un processus délicat que l’homme peut guider, mais jamais tout à fait contrôler. Sur le temps long, le bronze gardera sa solidité, mais s’oxydera imperceptiblement. Une première basse continue s’entend ainsi dans le cadre du Retable : la matière, dans toute sa diversité et ses transformations, participe à rythmer le temps.

Car l’immobilité est toujours un leurre chez Jeremy Demester : le rythme et le mouvement s’expriment pour lui aussi bien dans les surfaces les plus lisses et les plus calmes. Fermé, le Retable présente une surface miroitante uniforme, d’un gris de brume qui se charge de milliers de nuances selon l’heure du jour, l’angle du regard, la force de la lumière. Le peintre a travaillé cet effet dans sa série de tableaux intitulée Vins d’Anjou (2015-2017) à travers laquelle il cherchait à retrouver les teintes changeantes du sang lorsqu’il est encore dans nos veines, avant que le contact avec l’air et l’oxydation ne lui donnent sa couleur rouge. Placé dans un environnement stable, un Vin d’Anjou évolue au fil de la journée et des saisons : il se charge de tout ce qui passe, ici et maintenant. Le fait que les Vins d’Anjou soient réalisés avec de la peinture industrielle sur des panneaux d’aluminium n’est pas anodin. Il rattache l’œuvre à une culture minimaliste, détachée de la peinture figurative et pourtant ancrée dans le réel, puisque le matériau sera toujours plus réel que le meilleur réalisme. Les artisans entretiennent le même rapport aux matériaux qu’ils travaillent, ils en connaissent le poids, l’équilibre, les nuances. Cette peinture étincelante est l’élément qui permet au Retable de s’ancrer dans la même dimension que ses spectateurs quotidiens, les tonneliers. Chaque jour, ils partageront L’Ombre du temps – les infimes variations de leur atmosphère commune, profondément inscrites dans la matière.

Contrairement aux fidèles des églises médiévales, les spectateurs du Retable du temps ne suivent pas un calendrier pour ouvrir ou refermer celui-ci. Les tonneliers peuvent profiter à leur guise, pour ne pas dire à leur rythme, de l’effet théâtral produit par le déploiement des deux volets latéraux. L’intérieur du Retable entre en contraste intense avec la sobriété de sa modulation fermée : le jaune et l’orangé y jaillissent avec force, vigoureusement projetés en avant d’un bleu profond pour traverser les cinq mètres de largeur de l’œuvre, se rejoignant, se séparant, tourbillonnant en volutes organiques. Dans un équilibre instinctif qui semble prêt à se rompre, on ne sait si l’on distingue des arbres, des flammes ou bien une aurore boréale. L’ensemble évoque un paysage expressionniste, où se condenserait l’énergie contenue dans toute la matière. Grâce au mouvement du retable, un monde s’est ouvert, colossal et dansant. Peut-être le paysage n’était-il qu’un prétexte, et peut-être le sujet de cette œuvre est-il ailleurs. Les touches rapides et précises y côtoient de longues lignes pleines d’aplomb, les strates de couleurs superposées font glisser l’œil sur des surfaces vibrantes. Ce triptyque est fait de rythmes maîtrisés. Tous nos gestes, antiques ou neufs, sont liés à un rythme que l’on crée en répétant les mêmes gestes. Ce qui est vrai pour l’artiste est vrai pour l’artisan : la maîtrise du geste est une conquête, une lutte contre les difficultés de la matière, une longue et intraduisible recherche du geste juste, du rythme juste, entre force et douceur.

La façon dont les tonneliers exprimeront leur temporalité grâce au Retable est aussi intime que leur maîtrise du matériau et du geste. Demester raconte que dans l’atelier de tonnellerie, les artisans ont attiré son attention sur la musique. À chaque coup de maillet, le tonnelier sait si son travail est bon ; et chaque coup de maillet de chaque tonnelier remplit l’atelier, ajoute à son atmosphère. Ouvert ou fermé au gré des jours, L’Ombre des heures sera dans l’atelier pour un temps long. Il sera le témoin de ces rythmes, le support de souvenirs et de récits, la brèche par laquelle une communauté s’approprie le temps.

De l’aveu du expert savoir-faire tonnellerie Christophe Pierre, une symbiose s’est créée rapidement, grâce aux similitudes entre les valeurs d’authenticité et les parcours de vie de chacun. « Nous partons de la même chose pour aboutir, pour moi à une barrique, pour Jeremy à un tableau. »

« La façon dont nous exerçons le métier de tonnelier, chez Hennessy, est très particulière. Nous sommes chargés de l’entretien de fûts construits à la main par les anciens tonneliers de la Maison. L’automatisation était déjà apparue à l’époque, mais la Maison Hennessy a compris qu’elle devait conserver le savoir-faire artisanal pour pouvoir entretenir tous ses fûts anciens. On se doit d’avoir le niveau que les artisans avaient dans le passé pour ne pas détériorer cette matière première.

« Avec Jeremy Demester, nous avons réussi à nous comprendre sur le savoir-faire. Une alchimie s’est créée quand on s’est rendu compte que sa peinture, c’était comme notre bois, ses pinceaux, comme nos outils, qu’on travaille les matières nobles chacun à notre manière. La finalité est importante pour nous deux : aussi désordonné que puisse paraître le point de départ, la finalité est très précise.

Nous, tonneliers, nous avons un ensemble de pièces à assembler et nous ne pouvons pas en faire une mauvaise — sinon la barrique se cassera ou perdra son étanchéité. La maîtrise de la flamme, que nous utilisons pour chauffer le bois et donner de l’arôme au cognac, est aussi une maîtrise du geste. Tout doit être calibré, il faut savoir travailler avec les cinq sens.

« Le retable c’est un objet ancien, qu’on ouvre pour découvrir des choses. On se rejoint sur cette définition, car on se doit de faire perdurer un savoir-faire manuel, d’entretenir et de conserver une méthode de fabrication ancestrale. On n’intègre pas les techniques facilement. Quand je forme un jeune, il faut à peu près dix ans pour qu’il obtienne un niveau correct. Il faut du temps, de l’acharnement, de l’écoute. Acquérir le bon geste est un processus très profond.

« J’aime recevoir des gens d’horizons différents à l’atelier et échanger pendant la visite, c’est très enrichissant. Les gens repartent avec le sourire : ils ne pensaient pas qu’on travaillait encore de cette façon-là aujourd’hui. Ils ont l’impression d’être au XIXe siècle, ils retrouvent une certaine authenticité perdue, et c’est le plus gratifiant pour nous. Le retable est positionné de sorte qu’on le découvre dès qu’on entre dans l’atelier, en même temps qu’on découvre notre travail. Ça interpelle, ça pousse à avancer pour s’approcher, observer, échanger autour. En le regardant je pense beaucoup à l’équipe, l’entraide, le respect entre les différentes générations à l’atelier.

« On sent, dans ce tableau, quelque chose qui surgit. Comme nous avons appris à connaître l’artiste, on voit dans le tableau la rapidité de son esprit, les moments où il s’est levé la nuit pour peindre une idée qui jaillit. À mon avis, le mieux est de le découvrirfermé, pour conserver un effet de stupéfaction. Il y a cette face cachée, au départ, qui est déjà belle, avec son cadre en bronze où sont cachées beaucoup de choses ; et quand on l’ouvre on est surpris, on doit prendre le temps de rentrer dedans. À l’intérieur, il y a une grande ligne qui vient contredire toutes les formes arrondies, je cherche à comprendre cette décision du peintre : mettre une ligne là, pour trouver l’effet qu’il voulait.

« Aussi bien fermé qu’ouvert, le retable change la physionomie de l’atelier. Notre métier est dur, l’art apporte de l’apaisement ; et quand on est apaisé, on travaille très différemment. Pour vraiment le comprendre, il faut être sur place, entendre l’atelier, le sentir. Le parfum très fin de cognac que dégagent les barriques, l’odeur de pain grillé du bois chauffé, apportent un sentiment similaire. Ce sont des choses qui se vivent. »

1. Tchouang-tseu, Chapitre XIII, La voie du Ciel (13/e/68-74).
2. Rainer Maria Rilke, « Auguste Rodin, première partie, 1902 », publié pour la première fois dans Die Kunst, 1903.

Courtesy the artist, Hennessy and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | London | Paris
Installation views and works: Götz Göppert
Text: Marguerite Hennebelle
Video: Filmography
© Jeremy Demester


Gros-Câlin, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas230 × 160 × 3,5 cm

Sanmo, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas230 × 160 × 3,5 cm

Afójú, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm

Zangbéto I, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm

Zangbéto II, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm

Zangbéto III, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm

Zangbéto IV, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas240 × 200 × 3,5 cm

Yèhwé, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas240 × 200 × 3,5 cm

Passenger I, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas240 × 200 × 3,5 cm

Passenger II, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas150 × 400 × 3,5 cm

Sans titre (Quadriptyque), 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

Carved wood in collaboration with Kifouli Dossou178 × 34 × 23 cm

Òjìji, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas and carved woodopen: 240 × 480 × 6 cmclosed: 240 × 240 × 13,5 cm

Retable de Ouidah, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas and carved woodopen: 240 × 480 × 6 cmclosed: 240 × 240 × 13,5 cm

Retable de Ouidah, 2021

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Gros-Câlin

Zinsou Foundation Museum, Ouidah
10 January – 30 June 2021

Five years ago, Jeremy Demester set foot on Ouidah’s red ground for the first time. After gathering and studying numerous oral myths from the Tzigane community, he started this journey to Vaudoo’s birthplace to understand the imaginative power linking Vodun society to the travelling people.

His pictorial work is devoted to recomposing a language of sensitive and simple forms which reveal a profoundly human substance and instinctive movements, like the composite representations we call fetishes. Object, image, animal or person; the fetish is a creative vector through the progressive abstraction of itself. For the artist: “the construction of a fetish is not only part of Benin endogenous cults, it is found in all civilisations”; according to him, it is “the key to integration and intellectualisation of the invisible into the visible in one object”.

Gros-Câlin (Big hug) is an ensemble of twenty artworks named after a book by Romain Gary (Émile Ajar). The exhibition gathers and puts in order the visions of an artist who gives a central place to intuition in his work, viewing this faculty as a mental technology which the modern man is barely experimenting.

The Foundation Zinsou Museum is, according to Jeremy Demester, a true heterotopia, “between illusion and perfection, time appears as ‘other’, it is an island where any reality can be reborn”.

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Gros-Câlin, 2021
Inkjet print on Hahnemühle
40 × 50 cm
Edition de 50
Benefits donated to non-profit organization Atoké

Courtesy the artist, Fondation Zinsou and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | London | Paris
Installation views and works: Claudia Lederer
Text: Sophie Zinsou, Jeremy Demester
Film: Claudia Lederer - co-production Fondation Zinsou and La Demestria
© Jeremy Demester


Ouidah, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas76 3/4 × 51 1/4 in.195 × 130 cm.

Le couvent, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

cauris and clay on aluminium and white onyxXXe century161 × 65 × 65 cm.Collection Zinsou Foundation

Legba

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, in two parts195 × 261 cm.

Le pouvoir de Lissa, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, in two parts230 × 346 cm.

Le soleil du peintre, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

ceramic on aluminiumXXe century155,5 × 65 × 65 cm.Collection Zinsou Foundation

Canari jug

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 261 cm.

Assen, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on plaster190,5 × 43,5 × 11,5

Zinhé, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on plaster190,5 × 43,5 × 11,5 cm.

Tété, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, in two parts118 1/4 × 177 3/8 in.300 × 450 cm.

2 × 5, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on fabric223 × 246,5 cm.

Buriyan ceremony dress, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and appliqué on fabric305,5 × 294 cm.

Tron, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and embroideries on fabric316,5 × 501 cm.

Temple des pythons, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

neon200 × 80 × 1 cm

L’arbre de l’oubli, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

neon260 × 12 × 1 cm

Ouémé, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas146 × 114,5 cm.

Hidden faces, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas146 × 114,5 cm.

Les jumeaux triplés, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas146 × 114,5 cm.

The tree of Fâ, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas146 × 114,5 cm.

Les fusils, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas146 × 114,5 cm.

FTW C, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and industrial paint on canvas146 × 114,5 cm.

Times of grace IV, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on plaster190 × 44,5 × 11,2 cm.

Gbodja, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and industrial paint on canvas300 × 225 cm.

Zangbéto, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on plaster189,5 × 44,5 × 11,5 cm.

Vi yonnou miyon ton, 2020

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Ouidah

Galerie Max Hetzler Bleibtreustraße 45, Berlin
14 March – 30 May 2020

Jeremy Demester lives and works between Paris and Ouidah, Benin, where he has established a studio. According to the Voodoo cults of the Yoruba culture, rooted in Togo, Benin and Nigeria, Ouidah is the city of revenants. Living closely to the spirits, Demester creates works inspired – in the strongest sense – by the vicinity of the otherworld, embodied in the most extraordinary objects, as well as the most common.

The present exhibition was developed through consultation with several Voodoo masters (Vodounnon). An oracle gave the artist twenty-one words. These words, such as sun, moon, arrow or cross, are all symbols that populate the works to activate the world of spirits. Stirred by invisible forces, Demester’s paintings embrace the infinite metamorphoses of this cult, through their intense colourism and their exploration of primordial energies.

Demester’s works are presented along with art objects from his own collection, created in Ouidah, which bear witness to several aspects of the Voodoo journey. The Voodoo art objects take various forms and continually evolve in response to the fluctuations of the Western market, which can be felt in the availability of certain fabrics or in clothing fashions. Voodoo, an ancestral force, embodies in all materials – it dominates life.

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Legba, XXe century
Cauris and clay on bronze and white onyx
161 × 65 × 65 cm
Original artefact
Collection Zinsou Foundation

Of Yoruba origin, the Legba is a deity (vaudoun), materialized by a sculpture placed at the entrance of houses, markets and temples to ward off evil spirits. He is a guardian of the house and of the village, a mediator between men and the spirits.

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Canari jug, XXe century
Ceramic on aluminium
155,5 × 65 × 65 cm
Original artefact
Collection Zinsou Foundation

The canari is a ritual jar, spirit receptacle of Yèhoué Azogbannon, a deity of Yoruba origin who reigns at the bottom of the oceans. This ferocious spirit is akin to a hydra: it is commonly depicted with three heads, but multiplies when it is angry, reaching sixteen to forty-one heads. The water in this canari saved a village, empowering female descendants of the king to defeat a male-led rebellion.

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Buriyan ceremony dress, 2019
acrylic on fabric
223 × 246,5 cm

The painted dress was worn during a Buriyan ceremony, a Brazilian branch of the voodoo cult. The giants embody the settlers, and their dances reflect the awkwardness of the movements of the whites. The profit from this sale will be donated to the Atoké association.

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | London | Paris
Installation views and works: Holger Niehaus
Texts: Galerie Max Hetzler, Marguerite Hennebelle
© Jeremy Demester


FTW, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas300.5 × 201 × 3.5 cm.

FTW #1, 2018

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas and bronze frame195 × 130 × 3.5 cm.framed: 234.5 × 170 × 5 cm.

FTW #2, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas, aluminium frame, painted aluminum plinthoverall: 228 × 205 × 90 cm.

FTW #3, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on plywood, lava stone, paint on aluminium, with steel frameopen: 200 × 560 × 4,5 cm.closed: 200 × 281,5 × 4,5 cm.

FTW #4, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on plywood, lava stone, paint on aluminium, with steel frameopen: 200 × 560 × 4,5 cm.closed: 200 × 281,5 × 4,5 cm.

FTW #4, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm.

FTW #5, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

white bronze16,3 × 8,7 × 7,6 cm.

FTW #6, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas231 × 160,5 × 3,5 cm.

FTW #7, 2019

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FTW

Galerie Max Hetzler, 57, rue du Temple, Paris
21 February – 30 March 2019

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FTW #6, 2019
white bronze
16,3 × 8,7 × 7,6 cm.

The sculpture representing a hermit is at the origin of the exhibition FTW. A vagabond dressed in frayed rags, with his blind human eyes, he made an amphora his home, living one day at a time. He is Diogenes the Cynic.

Indifferent to cultural conventions, he discourses, eats and masturbates in public. Carrying a lamp in full daylight, he wanders around the city looking for a human being, repeating tirelessly ‘I am looking for a man’ to each stranger he meets.

The hermit, FTW #6, is always armed; his shotgun serving as a walking stick. The three letters he overlooks – FTW – state a riddle that spans over all seven paintings. It is put to the test throughout the exhibition.

The hill is ablaze. A last tree resists. Its white hot trunk holds the abyss back while its top calls for an abstraction of the forms (FTW #1).

Ruth, mother of a thousand of sons, mourns her future orphans. She stands amidst the corn in John Keats’ poem “Ode to a Nightingale” (FTW #2).

The stone arch is a metal threshold. Symbolic of a voracious technical growth, it is yet the birthplace of what will also rescue (FTW #3).

In the hermit’s home, at the very bottom of the amphora, the altarpiece - theatre of rhythms and gestures – opens itself (FTW #4).

Upright of the white birches, poplars suggests a world of lava, a possible future without humankind (FTW #5 and FTW#8).

A new divinity, ruthless, he doesn’t serve anyone. He is the worlds’ killer (FTW #7).

J.D.

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | London | Paris
Installation views and works: Charles Duprat
Text: Jeremy Demester
© Jeremy Demester


Weidingen, 2018

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on plywood, paint on aluminium, steelopen: 400 × 540 cm.closed: 400 × 270 cm.

Le Retable de Weidingen aka La Fille du Diable, 2018

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Jeremy Demester

Stiftung zur Förderung zeitgenössischer Kunst in Weidingen, Weidingen
28 July – 26 August 2018

Jeremy Demester explores the nature of art and its relation with the founding myths of our world: symbolism, energies, alchemy, fate as well as sacred representations. His paintings and sculptures can never be taken at surface value as they are always layered with diverse, and sometimes cryptic, meaning. Demester’s work often is the result of collaborations (with craftsmen, children, scientists, philosophers and friends, who form what he names La Demestria), and thus opens itself to the world.

For the exhibition hall in Weidingen, Demester presents an altar of an imposing scale that combines several techniques dear to the artist. When closed, the altar alludes to the artist’s series Vins d’Anjou, a group of work that deals with the reproduction of the colour of blood before its oxidation. Running through our veins, blood can change from bluish to yellowish, sometimes nearly translucent, nuances. Only when in contact with air it turns into the deep red that became its main attribute. The metallic outer surface of Demester’s altar diffuses colour as opposed to canvases that tend to absorb it. The inside of the altar is covered by vivid brushstrokes of bright yellow, orange and red paint. Reminding of flickering flames that surround the architectural form in the centre of the work, the triptych introduces a visual narrative that often derives from Demester’s personal memories.

In reference to his nomadic roots, Demester describes himself a gypsy painter, a quest for identity underpins his work. As the descendant of a wandering ancestry, Demester is influenced by a wide variety of cultures and traditions. It is also an inherited Wanderlust that drew the artist to Africa in 2015, where he was invited for a residency at the Zinsou Foundation in Benin. During the residency in Cotonou, he discovered an alternate way of connecting to the world, through the power of magic, rituals and dances inspired by a keen observance and insightful knowledge of nature as well as of the spiritual world.

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | London | Paris
Installation views and works: Holger Niehaus
Text: Galerie Max Hetzler
© Jeremy Demester


Fire Walk With Me, 2018

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Jeremy Demester: Fire Walk With Me

Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London / Holzwarth Publications, Berlin 2018
With a text by Annabelle Gugnon and a booklet Raymond Hains: You Know Nothing Raymond

With the exhibition Fire Walk With Me, Demester catapults us into the savagery of the world. This wildness conquers our body. Our five senses cling to it, diffract it, try to tame it. The pigments, the forms, the movements of his canvases make visible the elements that stir the universe. They surface from the magma of colour and the precision of poetry as if from a parallel world that bubbles in the very heart of our lives. This world does not disclose itself but secretly guides desires, produces dreams, holds the memory of humanity, of our childhood.
A. Gugnon, ‘Vision’, in Jeremy Demester: Fire Walk With Me, Paris/Berlin: Galerie Max Hetzler and Holzwarth Publications, 2018, p. 5

Publisher: Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris | London
Holzwarth Publications, Berlin
Text: Annabelle Gugnon
Publication date: 2018
Binding: Hardcover with Booklet
Dimensions: 31 x 24,5 x 1,5 cm
Pages: 64 and 20
ISBN: 978-3-947127-03-0

Find the book here

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Fire Walk With Me, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas230 × 160 × 3,5 cm.

Le privilège des chemins, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

BMX bike, bronze95 × 145 × 67 cm.

Merlin, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

bronze67 × 97 × 99,5 cm.edition of 4, plus 1 AP

June, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas300 × 200 × 3,5 cm.

Undead still life (Muir), 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas300 × 200 × 3,5 cm.

Undead still life (Digne), 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas300 × 200 × 3,5 cm.

Undead still life (Ouidah), 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas230 × 160 × 3,2 cm.

Chepe Santacruz Londoño, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas230 × 160 × 3,2 cm.

Les tartines de Suzanne, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas230 × 160 × 3,2 cm.

Leo le chasseur, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas230 × 160 × 3,2 cm.

La loup des bois, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas200 × 130 × 4,5

Martial et Les Resistants, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

hand-crafted acrylic paint on canvas230 × 160 × 3,5 cm.

War painting I, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

hand-crafted acrylic paint on canvas230 × 160 × 3,5 cm.

War painting II, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

hand-crafted acrylic paint on canvas230 × 160 × 3,5 cm.

War painting III, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

hand-crafted acrylic paint on canvas230 × 160 × 3,5 cm.

War painting IV, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas250 × 200 × 3,5 cm.

La Bonne Porte, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas64 × 48 × 3,5 cm.

Ma mère en bleu (le pont de Barles), 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on copper plate, mounted on wooden frame64 × 48 × 3,5 cm.

‘Remission’ d’après Paul Romero, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on copper plate, mounted on wooden frame64 × 48 × 3,5 cm.

Fire Walk With Me, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on copper plate, mounted on wooden frame22 × 16 × 4 cm

Mon Balou à Maustack, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on copper plate, mounted on wooden frame22 × 16 × 4 cm.

Mr Della Casagrande, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on copper plate, mounted on wooden frame22 × 16 × 4 cm.

Yolande et sa tortue, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on copper plate, mounted on wooden frame22 × 16 × 4 cm.

Marinette, la goutte au nez, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on copper plate, mounted on wooden frame22 × 16 × 4 cm.

Paulette, la pâte aux fruits, 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on copper plate, mounted on wooden frame96 × 64 × 3,5 cm.

L’heure du diable, 2017

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Fire Walk With Me

Galerie Max Hetzler, Goethestraße 2/3, Berlin
10 November 2017 – 20 January 2018

Jeremy Demester explores the nature of art and its relation with the founding myths of our world: symbolism, energies, alchemy, fate, sacred representations… His paintings and sculptures can thus never be taken at surface value as they are always layered with diverse, and sometimes cryptic, meaning. In reference to his nomadic roots, Demester describes himself a gypsy painter and a quest for identity underpins his work.

This new series of works was completed during the artist’s ten almost monastic months spent in his studio in the south of France and marks a surprising turn in his practice. The works express a dialogue with figuration and natural elements, as well as with the personal history of the artist (memories from his childhood or from recent trips to Africa and America). These memories are embodied by sunrises and sunsets, forests and timeless moments between the past and the present, raising questions about the ideas of still-life and subjectivity.

Demester’s paintings and sculptures involve a strong presence of both body and motion. The abstract works, including blurred lines and gradations, usually created with the use of spray utensils or with a computer, are here made by hand using the old master’s techniques and thus create a genuine sensorial and physical experience. Influenced by the spirit of Caspar David Friedrich and Arnold Böcklin, each canvas is the abstract expression of a particular memory, a narrative. The abstraction gives free reign to meditation, as if we were looking at a sky in the romantic or the symbolist tradition.

Another language, neither abstract nor figurative, is employed by the artist in a series of paintings inspired by the patterns of war paintings of native American-Indian tribes. Using specific industrial and military painting techniques, Demester conceives each series as an experiment oscillating between building up a visual information and implementing the techniques of its subsequent distortion.

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | London | Paris
Installation views and works: Holger Niehaus
Text: Galerie Max Hetzler
© Jeremy Demester


Stelas

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, aluminium frame195 × 130 cm.framed: 237 × 175 × 5 cm.

Stela, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela II, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela III, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela IV, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela V, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela VI, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela VII, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela VIII, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Stela IX, 2023

Une histoire du mouvement et de la vie se déploie dans Stela, la dernière série de l’artiste. Neuf compositions, rejetant la distinction entre paysage et abstraction, font la synthèse de plusieurs œuvres antérieures de l’artiste. Animés de couleurs violentes, ciels, arbres, pluie et flammes se recouvrent et s’entremêlent, montant de la terre vers le ciel. Alors que notre regard se débat dans ces nuées de formes et de couleurs, nous remarquons des paires d’yeux peints, regardant droit devant eux, qui peuplent la plupart des tableaux – ils rappellent des signaux rudimentaires placés à l’arrière des camions pour inviter les conducteurs à la vigilance. Par un mouvement mimétique, ces yeux en appellent à nos propres yeux ; sentant se dégager des tableaux une présence troublante, nous trouvons en eux des interlocuteurs. Leurs titres sont des surnoms donnés dans tous les pays, de tous temps, mais leur frontalité de monolithes signale que nous rencontrons des témoins d’âges ancestraux.

— Marguerite Hennebelle for XXI, Perrotin Dubai, Février 2023

A story of movement and life also unfolds in the artist’s latest series Stela. Refusing the distinction between landscape and abstraction, the nine compositions synthesize several of the artist’s past works. Animated by vibrant colors, skies, trees, rain, and flames overlap and intermingle, rising from the earth to the sky. While our own eyes struggle through these clouds of shapes and colors, pairs of painted eyes staring straight ahead are the resting point in most of the paintings – reminiscent of the rudimentary signs placed at the rear of trucks warning drivers to be vigilant. In a mimetic process, these eyes speak to our own eyes, becoming our interlocutors amidst the uncanny presence emanating from the paintings. Their titles are nicknames that exist in every country, in all epochs – but their monolithic frontality signals that we are facing witnesses of ancestral ages.

— Marguerite Hennebelle pour XXI, Perrotin Dubai, Février 2023

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« Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again… Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes… »
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

Stela VIII, 2023


Assembled-Figures

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, carbon forged, bronze, aluminium, painted aluminium, steel240 × 166 × 34 cm.

Djemy III, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, bronze, aluminum, painted aluminium, resin262 × 185 × 22 cm.

MDB, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, stone, painted resin244 × 205 × 8 cm.

L.L., 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, stone, aluminium, painted resin211 × 200 × 50 cm.

MIMI, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, bronze, painted resin, steel248 × 166 × 17 cm.

Nana, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, bronze, aluminium200 × 133 × 22 cm.

4 × 4, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, stone, plexiglas, painted aluminium, steel185 × 216 × 7 cm.

Pascale, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, painted aluminium249 × 159 × 9 cm.

TATA, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, stone, aluminium, painted aluminium, wood, resin, bass, plexiglas, steel137 × 200x 7 cm.

HÔHÔ, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, bronze and brass275 × 221 × 15 cm.

Kitemmuort, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, bronze, brass, aluminium, steel262 × 200 × 13.5 cm.

L’é dané sar chouri yaka perdo kamlimose, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, carbon forged, Venezuala green marble, aluminium308 × 265 × 15 cm.

Maymouna Kayachounel, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, resin, aluminium, brass, steel310 × 268 × 34 cm.

Mozart Lélé, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, bronze, brass, resin337 × 200 × 9.5 cm.

Je chante devant vous tous, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, resin, steel268 × 255 × 31 cm.

Kali, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, bronze, resin, aluminium338 × 200 × 30 cm.

Vasdav lai yaka dikav yirtco, 2022


Altarpieces

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on plywood, paint on aluminium, steelclosed: 400 × 270 cm.

Le retable de Weidingen aka la fille du Diable, 2018

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on plywood, paint on aluminium, steelopen: 400 × 540 cm.

Le retable de Weidingen aka la fille du Diable, 2018

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on plywood, paint on aluminium, steelopen: 400 × 540 cm.

Le retable de Weidingen aka la fille du Diable, 2018

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on plywood, lava stone, paint on aluminium, steelclosed: 200 × 281,5 × 4,5 cmCollection Rennie Museum, Vancouver

FTW #4, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on plywood, lava stone, paint on aluminium, steelclosed: 200 × 281,5 × 4,5 cmCollection Rennie Museum, Vancouver

FTW #4, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on plywood, lava stone, paint on aluminium, steelopen: 200 × 560 × 4,5 cm.Collection Rennie Museum, Vancouver

FTW #4, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, carved woodclosed: 240 × 240 × 13,5 cm.Collection Rennie Museum, Vancouver

Retable de Ouidah, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, carved woodclosed: 240 × 240 × 13,5 cm.Collection Rennie Museum, Vancouver

Retable de Ouidah, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on wood, bronze, painting on aluminium, steelclosed: 420 × 250 × 8 cm.Collection Patrimoine Hennessy

L’Ombre des heures, le Retable du temps, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on wood, bronze, painting on aluminium, steelopen: 420 × 500 × 8 cm.Collection Patrimoine Hennessy

L’Ombre des heures, le Retable du temps, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, bronze, painted aluminium, steelclosed: 180 × 94 × 12 cmwith frame: 211 × 126 × 12 cm.

21 Graces Altarpiece, 2023

21 Graces Altarpiece, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, bronze, painted aluminium, steelopen: 180 × 188 × 8 cm.with frame: 211 × 188 × 8 cm.

21 Graces Altarpiece, 2023

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas, bronze, painted aluminium, steelopen: 180 × 188 × 8 cm.with frame: 211 × 188 × 8 cm.

21 Graces Altarpiece, 2023

Altarpiece series

2018 — ongoing

Depuis 2018, Jeremy Demester crée des retables monumentaux pour des lieux exceptionnels, comme la Fondation pour l’art contemporain de Weidingen ou l’atelier de tonnellerie de la Maison Hennessy à Cognac. Ces retables reprennent la structure mobile des polyptyques de la fin du Moyen Âge, qui matérialisaient le rythme cyclique des fêtes liturgiques par leurs ouvertures et leurs fermetures. Installés derrière l’autel des églises, ces retables étaient fermés la plus grande partie de l’année et donnaient à voir, chaque jour, une scène simple et austère en lien avec les cultes locaux. Mais quand arrivaient les quelques fêtes importantes de l’année liturgique, l’habitant du village voisin ou le pèlerin qui venait de traverser de sombres forêts, tous deux peu coutumiers du luxe, se voyaient révéler la composition vivement colorée et parée d’or du retable grand ouvert, déployée largement sur les trois volets. Ces œuvres toujours uniques mettaient en scène avec puissance le dévoilement du surnaturel dans le cycle du temps.

Nourri par cette histoire séculaire de l’art, Demester utilise les panneaux mobiles de ses retables pour combiner plusieurs séries et les mettre en mouvement. Chaque retable est une expérimentation combinatoire unique, associant des cadres ou des prédelles de bronze ou de bois, travaillés dans des ateliers qui pratiquent des techniques traditionnelles, avec les surfaces miroitantes des Vins d’Anjou, série la plus radicalement moderniste et minimaliste de l’artiste. De ces portails gigantesques et sévères, réconciliant les matériaux bruts et industriels, surgissent les mondes éclatants des panneaux intérieurs, où des paysages irréels, jetés en couleurs pures, traversent toute la largeur de l’œuvre. Les retables sont ainsi l’occasion de synthèses méditatives de l’artiste sur sa pratique picturale – mais, plus encore, ils sont des efforts de condensation de l’énergie insaisissable qui anime la matière.


Times of Graces

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas160 × 120 cm.

Times of Grace X, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas204 × 139 × 4 cm.

Times of Grace IX, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas204 × 139 × 4 cm.

Times of Grace VIII, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas240 × 200 cm.

Times of Grace VI, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and oil on canvas146 × 354 cm.

Times of Grace V, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and hand-crafted paint on canvas146 × 114,5 cm.

Times of Grace IV, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas195 × 130 cm.

Times of Grace III, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on aluminium150 × 100 cm.

Times of Grace II, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on aluminium150 × 100 cm.

Times of Grace, 2019

Jeremy Demester describes the Times of Grace series as pure experimentation with pictorial matter. The forms we can recognise in the paintings are merely starting points for exploring the virtually inexhaustible variations of colour. Positioning himself in this way on the borderline between figuration and abstraction, the artist finds a liberating position that allows him to propose new paths in the history of painting. In his paintings, which vary in style, Demester uses forms that are naturally subject to fluctuation, capable of deformation and multiplication, and capable of generating themselves. Leaves, drops, tears and flames are thrown onto the canvas in colours that the artist calls, in the intimacy of his studio, “archangel blue”, “orange African rain” or “anguish black”. This approach brings to mind Paul Gauguin’s advice to his Pont-Aven disciple Émile Schuffenecker: “Art is an abstraction - draw it from nature by dreaming in front of it, and think more about the creation than the result”. Heir to post-impressionism, Demester’s canvases nevertheless seem to emerge from inner states that are more restless and agitated than those of his predecessors. Layers of powerful colours and expressive brushstrokes depict on canvas the artist’s struggle with his subject - which seems to lose itself and reveal itself in turn, as the brush vibrates. The forms are carried away by a tyrannical breath, finding their stability, miraculously, in a subtle chromatic balance or in the repetition of a stroke. And this fragile harmony that stands up to chaos is repeated like so many “moments of grace” in the work of the painter, who tirelessly gets back to work, confronting each new composition.

Jeremy Demester décrit la série Times of Grace comme une pure expérimentation sur la matière picturale. Les formes que nous pouvons y reconnaitre ne sont que des points de départ pour explorer les variations virtuellement inépuisables du colorisme. Se plaçant de la sorte à la frontière entre la figuration et l’abstraction, l’artiste trouve une position libératrice, qui lui permet de proposer de nouveaux chemins dans l’histoire de la peinture. Dans ces tableaux de factures variées, Demester compose à partir de formes naturellement soumises à la fluctuation, propices aux déformations et aux multiplications, capables de s’auto-engendrer. Feuilles, gouttes, larmes ou flammes sont jetées sur le tableau dans des couleurs que l’artiste nomme, dans l’intimité de son atelier, « bleu archange », « orange pluie d’Afrique » ou encore « noir d’angoisse ». Observant cette démarche, l’on pense aux recommandations de Paul Gauguin à son disciple de Pont-Aven Émile Schuffenecker : « l’art est une abstraction – tirez-la de la nature en rêvant devant et pensez plus à la création qu’au résultat. » Héritières du post-impressionnisme, les toiles de Demester semblent néanmoins naître d’états intérieurs plus inquiets et agités que celles de ses prédécesseurs. Des strates de couleurs puissantes et de touches expressives décrivent sur la toile la lutte de l’artiste avec son sujet – lequel semble se perdre et se révéler tour à tour, au gré de la vibration du pinceau. Les formes sont emportées par un souffle tyrannique, trouvant leur stabilité, miraculeusement, dans un subtil équilibre chromatique ou dans la répétition d’une touche. Et cette fragile harmonie qui tient tête au chaos se répète comme autant de « moments de grâce » dans le travail du peintre, qui se remet à la tâche inlassablement, affrontant chaque nouvelle composition.

Texts: Marguerite Hennebelle
© Jeremy Demester


Equal scale plates

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas160 × 120 cm.

Equal scale plate #10, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on canvas180 × 300 × 4 cm.

Equal scale plate #5, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and oil on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm.

Equal scale plate #7, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and oil on canvas240 × 200 × 3,5 cm.

Equal scale plate #8, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and oil on canvas240 × 200 × 3,5 cm.

Equal scale plate #9, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and oil on canvas240 × 200 × 3,5 cm.

Equal scale plate #11, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and oil on canvas240 × 200 × 3,5 cm.

Equal scale plate #14, 2021


Zangbéto

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and hand-crafted paint on canvas300 × 225 cm.

Zangbéto, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm.

Le couvent, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and oil on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm.

Zangbéto I, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and oil on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm.

Zangbéto II, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and oil on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm.

Zangbéto III, 2021

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic and oil on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm.

Zangbéto IV, 2021


Trees

Image – Jeremy Demester

acrylic on percale204 × 139 × 4 cm.

FTW #13, 2022

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas146 × 114,5 cm

The Tree of Fâ, 2020

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil and acrylic on canvas, tin horse230 × 390 cm.

L’ange et l’arbre, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm

FTW #12, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm

FTW #11, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm

FTW #10, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm

FTW #9, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm

FTW #8, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas195 × 130 × 3,5 cm

FTW #5, 2019

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas300 × 201 × 3,5 cm

FTW #1, 2018

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas300 × 200 × 3,5 cm

Undead still life (Muir), 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas300 × 200 × 3,5 cm

Undead still life (Digne), 2017

Image – Jeremy Demester

oil on canvas300 × 200 × 3,5 cm

Undead still life (Ouidah), 2017


Vins d’Anjou

Image – Jeremy Demester

paint on aluminium, bronze60 × 40 × 12 cm.

Vin d’Anjou I, 2015

Image – Jeremy Demester

paint on aluminium, stainless steel, bronze150 × 100 × 12 cm.

Vin d’Anjou III, 2015

Image – Jeremy Demester

paint on aluminium, brass, bronze150 × 100 × 12 cm.

Vin d’Anjou III, 2015

Image – Jeremy Demester

paint on aluminium, brass, bronze150 × 100 × 12 cm.

Vin d’Anjou III, 2015

Image – Jeremy Demester

mat paint on aluminium, bronze61 × 40 × 9 cm.

Vin d’Anjou (mat), 2016

Image – Jeremy Demester

paint on aluminium, stainless steel150 × 100 × 30 cm

Vin d’Anjou V, 2015

Image – Jeremy Demester

paint on aluminium, stainless steel150 × 100 × 30 cm

Vin d’Anjou IV, 2015

Image – Jeremy Demester

paint on aluminium, brass150 × 100 × 6 cm

Vin d’Anjou VI, 2015

In parallel with his research into nature and the elements, Jeremy Demester is developing a reflection on the physico-chemical properties of matter and colour. The Vins d’Anjou series is painted on aluminium panels and appears, at first glance, to be perfectly monochrome. However, the viewer standing in front of a Vin d’Anjou struggles to define the colour of these monochromes, so rich and changing are the nuances, perpetually renewed by the light: the silver surface, worked with industrial paints, contains every hue from blue to pink, from white to gold. At first surreal, immobile and cold, the works and their colourful metamorphoses become seductive and fascinating, their strange materiality akin to the Abstracts Paintings of Ad Reinhardt or the minimalist volumes of Donald Judd. This material and symbolic tension is due to the subject of the series, whose title is borrowed from alchemical vocabulary: ‘Anjou wine’ is the most fluid and vital substance in the biological world. When it is still in our veins, blood is charged with multiple nuances. In fact, it’s impossible to imagine the colour of blood when it’s inside us. It is only when it comes into contact with air, through oxidation, that it takes on its bright red colour. Faced with this secret hidden in the material, Demester’s paintings are like so many murky mirrors, their surface offering an infinite range of potential colours. Vins d’Anjou series stand on the borderline between figuration and abstraction, thanks to the way their colour is embedded in the material. The painter expresses what is at the heart of our own bodies, yet escapes human perception. What can painting do in the face of what nature cannot represent?

Parallèlement à ses recherches sur la nature et les éléments, Jeremy Demester développe une réflexion sur les propriétés physico-chimique de la matière et des couleurs. La série des Vins d’Anjou est peinte sur des panneaux d’aluminium et semble, au premier regard, parfaitement monochrome. Pourtant, le spectateur qui évolue devant un Vin d’Anjou peine à définir la couleur de ces monochromes, tant les nuances y sont riches, changeantes, perpétuellement renouvelées par la lumière : la surface argentée, travaillée à l’aide de peintures industrielles, contient toutes les teintes du bleu au rose, du blanc à l’or. D’abord surréelles, immobiles et froides, les œuvres et leurs métamorphoses colorées se font séductrices, fascinantes, leur étrange matérialité rejoignant les Abstracts Paintings d’Ad Reinhardt ou les volumes minimalistes de Donald Judd. Cette tension matérielle et symbolique est due au sujet de la série, dont le titre est emprunté au vocabulaire alchimique : le « vin d’Anjou » est la substance la plus fluide et vitale du monde biologique. Lorsqu’il est encore dans nos veines, le sang est chargé de multiples nuances. D’ailleurs, il est impossible de se figurer la couleur du sang lorsqu’il est en nous. Ce n’est qu’au contact de l’air, par un effet d’oxydation, qu’il prend sa couleur rouge vif. Face à ce secret caché dans la matière, les tableaux de Demester s’offrent comme autant de miroirs troubles, leur surface proposant une infinité de coloris potentiels. Les Vins d’Anjou se placent à la frontière entre la figuration et l’abstraction, grâce à l’inscription de leur couleur dans la matière. Le peintre y exprime ce qui, étant au cœur de nos propres corps, échappe pourtant à la perception humaine. Que peut la peinture face à ce que la nature a d’irreprésentable ?

Texts: Marguerite Hennebelle
© Jeremy Demester