Jan-Ole Schiemann

Kasmin presents Cologne-based painter Jan-Ole Schiemann’s third solo presentation at the gallery, If There Was a Letter for It. On view are new canvas paintings that index a careful process of gestural mark making, featuring the first series of paintings Schiemann realized in his new Cologne studio, all of which incorporate oil paint in his work for the first time. With oil, Schiemann intensifies the expression of velocity in his newest series of works. In thicker layers, Schiemann’s gestural marks glide across the canvas and retain the immediate sensibility of the artist’s hand, widening the range of motion that he captures. The smooth and energetic texture of the paint layers defines these surfaces, complementing the embedded texture of the canvas weave visible through Schiemann’s acrylic stains.

Schiemann’s bold abstractions take a distinct geometric character in this new body of work. These paintings see Schiemann return to the grid as a guiding compositional strategy, one he has not explored since graduating from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf over a decade ago. After staining the canvas in thin layers of acrylic and sketching the surface in charcoal, Schiemann builds his compositions with dynamic gestures, working against the self-imposed constraints of the grid. Squares, circles, and hard edge shapes cohere alongside organic forms that bleed into the canvas, distorting figure and ground. With an assertive palette of blues, pinks, reds, and yellows, Schiemann uses oil to complete his works with precise detailing that expands the depths of his vibrant surfaces.

Schiemann’s atmospheric fields of color are framed by curving contours that approach the notations of language, recalling the visual vocabulary that defined the artist’s lauded Kavex series presented at Kasmin in 2019. As the eponymous painting’s title suggests, the paintings in If There Was a Letter for It evoke a sense of longing for a way to express a feeling with signs and symbols, testing the limitations of that notion. The paintings lay bare the process by which Schiemann builds his compositions, expanding the lexicon of gestures, textures and palettes that define his signature style.

Cologne-based artist Jan-Ole Schiemann (b. 1983) expands and challenges abstract painting traditions through a process of mark-making, constructing images that are simultaneously sophisticated and playful. With a practice steeped in gesturalism, lyrical abstraction, and the history of twentieth-century animation, Schiemann’s large-scale paintings and works on paper burst into frenetic clarity, kindling a dialectical query between process and image, paint and surface, and the spatial divisions produced therein. Recent solo exhibitions of Schiemann’s work have been staged at Neue Galerie Gladbeck, Germany (2023), Wentrup, Berlin (2024), Kasmin, New York (2023), Nino Mier Gallery, Marfa, TX (2022), and elsewhere.