Some of His Parts
Catalogue Essay for Jeroen Nelemans: The Serial Portrait
Wichita State University
Aug-Sep, 2023
I was very honored to be asked by Jeroen to write the essay for an exhibition of his work, The Serial Portraits, at Wichita State University in 2023. While I didn’t know Jeroen very well at the time, the opportunity to write about his artwork afforded me a very intimate and special glimpse into his life and practice as an artist and gay man. Jeroen passed away shortly after this project was completed, after a sudden and brief battle with illness. Learn more about him and his work, here, and read my essay on this body of work, here.
Exhibition Statement
“The Serial Portrait” is an exhibition by Jeroen Nelemans with two series that delve into the intersection of time, medium, (digital) space, and their connection to identity.
“I See You Too, Young Bear” captures the essence of early 2000s digital culture with screenshots from a video chat program. Resurfacing after 20 years, I photographed these screenshots of my younger self with a flash on my computer screen in order to reclaim them as a self-portrait series.
“The Serial Portrait” draws from Google Art Project, a digital platform launched in 2011, featuring images from global museums of their collections. In 2013, when its popularity surged and image quality enhanced, I felt compelled to utilize this new art experiencing platform as source material. I collected nine high resolution images of artworks depicting a physical interaction between two naked men. I found a connection in the concealed identities and the masked nature of the physical gesture. Ten years later, these became the subject through a means of image transfer, a craft technique that allows ink to move from paper to wood. This analog collaging mirrored Photoshop’s essence, as I am physically cutting, copying, and pasting the ink of an image onto the board. Printed images of body parts made from different times and mediums now come together as a consistent yet evolving self-portrait series, reflecting the mutable nature of identity.
About the Artist
Jeroen Nelemans (1974-2024) is/was a Netherlands born conceptual artist who most recently lived and worked in Kansas where he served as a full-time professor at Kansas Wesleyan University. Through his practice, Nelemans investigates digital images and treats them as physical objects. Through the act of scanning the computer screen or photographing a backlit digital device, Nelemans dissects these images, investigating their process while exposing the mechanism of display. Ultimately, this relationship investigates how we process and read digital images through backlit devices. Nelemans is interested in these new forms, yet still maintains a thread of nostalgia throughout the process
nelemansjeroen.com