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The conversation, 140 X 200 cm. Oil on canvas, 2019

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Principal Uncertainty

 

Jarik Jongman (Amsterdam, 1962) introduces waiting rooms, data centers and film sets as a stage for ideas about reality and human behaviour in the ‘post truth’ society. More than ever, ‘truth’ seems to have become a fluid concept. Furthermore, the paradoxical situation has arisen, wherein the abundance of information available is merely contributing to our insecurity. In his current work the artist constructs new, imaginary visual spaces, departing from personal memories and associations and found imagery from newspapers, magazines and the internet.

 

The painting ‘The conversation’ refers to a (hypothetical) conversation between the cynical American politician Karl Rove and quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg, discussing reality. Heisenberg famously said:

“The reality of which we can speak is never reality itself but a reality designed by us” and Rove was the first who postulated, (in what is almost a megalomaniac artist statement):

“That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do”