Marcus Antonius Jansen—named after the Roman general Marcus Antonius—was born in 1968 in New York City, the son of a German father and a Jamaican mother. Jansen grew up both in the Bronx and in Germany, which he first visited as a one-year-old. As an mixed race child, He experienced bullying so his father sent him back to New York to connect with his family during summers. There, Jansen’s exposure to graffiti writing activated his artistic sensibility and offered him an example of art as a tool for communication.
In this exhibition, Jansen’s artistic influences, gleaned from Abstract Expressionism, from German Expressionism—both pre- and postwar—and from graffiti artists in New York, Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels, overlap and complement each other in their commitment to impulsive and spontaneous expression. Committed to the idea that art can reflect and transmit direct reactions to oppressive political situations, he paints to create images that open up civilized and relevant discourses. The works presented “In the Land of the Silhouettes” offer glimpses into the fluid and uncensored imagination of one of the most exciting artists at work today. Jansen’s challenging and paradoxical silhouette paintings take us into worlds of power and possibility that transcend time and place and ask us to recognize aspects of our own experiences. His works are full of perceptions—not judgements—that offer opportunities to think freely and deeply about the forces that surround our lives and actions.
Although his work is extremely timely today, it has been the last 25 years in which Jansen has been noted by critics and historians as a pioneer with his often socially critical and politically charged landscapes since the late 1990s, responding to recurring topics of economic inequality and power structures in business culture and politics.
His permanent collections reside at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Baker Museum at Artis-Naples, The University of Michigan Museum of Art, Rollins Museum of Art, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art,, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art, Housatonic Museum of Art, Foundation Calosa and the Smithsonian Institution.
Jansen’s solo museum exhibitions include the La Triennale di Milano Museum in Milan, Italy, Rollins Museum of Art in Orlando, Florida, the Kallmann Museum in Ismaning, Germany, and The Baker Museum at Artis-Naples in Naples, Florida. Other museum highlights include a spotlight exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, “Deconstructing Marcus Jansen.”
Return to the Edge, 84″ x 72″, oil enamel, oil stick, spray paint on canvas, 2022
His-Story #1, 48″ x 60″, oil enamel, oil stick, spray paint on canvas, 2022
Loot, I Shoot, 50″ x 74″, oil enamel, oil stick, spray paint on canvas, 2022