About:
Modernist playwright and writer Anton Checkhov once wrote: "In description of nature one should seize upon minutiae, grouping them so that when, having read the passage, you close your eyes, a picture is formed. For example, you will evoke a moonlit night by writing that on the mill dam the glass fragments of a broken bottle flashed like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled along like a ball." Or Hemingway: "The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water." This is the line of Hagenaar's work: show, don't tell.Evoking the ambience of vintage lifestyle magazines or the ancient art of myth, Hagenaar's paintings are dense with ambience. Central is the allusion to a world behind the visible image; a world of association, memory and reflection that materialises in the mind's eye of the viewer in concert with their own frame of reference. Through the transformation of the painting process, Hagenaar drapes a veil of subjectivity over the figurative image, transcending the simple illustration of reality.
"My work is about time", Hagenaar says, "the passing of time." This through the evocation of memory and nostalgia: selective frames within which we perceive our own realities. Memory's erosion works to transform a narrative into an experience; emotions and feelings come to precede literal events. Such is Hagenaar's work: he sublimates the narrative of the figurative image into that of a memory, making the viewer experience by seeing. His paintings are not there to match, but rather to convince.
Born in 1977, Tilburg, the Netherlands, Jasper Hagenaar lives and works in Hedikhuizen, the Netherlands.