JENS KAEUMLE

Across a transformative scene in Johan Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, the eponymous hero and his pupil, Wagner are strolling outside the city gates as night nears. Faust shares with Wagner a simple idea – that every human has the desire to soar like birds. Unmoved, Wagner shares that he has never felt that way, to which Faust responds that he has two souls: one, earthly, is tied to the physical; the other, spiritual, reaches toward the stars.

Part of the predicament of identity stems from our always-already extant duality, that of living while constantly dying, that of being represented in the constant process of decay. If we were to turn again to Goethe, we would hear him say, “the midwife was so unskilled I was brought into the world as good as dead,” as if he were on the way out at the moment of his arrival. It is this indeterminacy which Kaeumle captures so poetically, each drawing a moment between the ideal and the destroyed, each a step along the way from best self to next self. Add in the duality of materials – the viscosity of ink, like a lifeblood, against the coagulation of pastel, that which has already turned to solid – and you see each work both direct and deflect being’s conundrum. This is the true poignancy of Kaeumle’s portraits. They hinge not on Goethe’s construction of self, nor on its many subsequent dissections. Instead, it hinges on the universal recognition that each of us is one thing and many at the same time, in this moment and every other. Looks of fear, joy, resignation, inscrutability; images of self and other, wrapped up in an inability to determine which is which. True to inspiration, here we see the many. And therein, we look to find ourselves, which we could more easily term a one. Each. Every. One.

While grounded in Goethe’s theoretical, Jens Kaeumle’s series of portraits brings this duality to the surface. In a series of twelve works, Kaeumle grounds the construct of self before effacing it through stroke and gesture, first through the controlled application of black ink, then later through uncontrolled overlays in uncontrolled strokes of black oil pastel. The modern manifestation of Goethe’s predicament, one might argue, is art historian Michael Fried’s exploration disfiguration and effacement, the literal and metaphorical peeling back and removal of that part of self that is inevitably tied to identity. In Faust, the chaos of the dueling self is internalized; in Fried, this unbecoming is made manifest, rises to the surface, scratches, and etches and burns itself across the idea of identity.

This duality isn’t unique to Faust. At times, the construct seems metaphorical, but takes form in the literal - man-beasts like the Minotaur, satyrs, tritons, or centaurs; woman-beasts like Scylla, the Sphinx, and Medusa. But Faust’s dilemma is different. Outwardly, he is a respected doctor; inwardly, he is transfixed, even transubstantiated, by the indeterminacy of identity – the challenge of anchoring the self within a sea of constant opposition. He is, one could argue, a therianthrope – one who can transform themselves into an animal other. A shapeshifter.

Kaeumle’s portraits bring this duality back to the surface It is as if he overlays oneself upon the other. The angelic, of course, is the more beautiful self, the more refined representation, the best self, as it were. The earthly, the base, is the overlay, the gesture that works to redefine – rather than refine – the image it displaces but does not destroy. In many ways, this is Kaeumle’s deftest touch. It is as if every surface demands an answer to a series of intersecting questions: Am I one, or many? Am I created in God’s image, or even in the image of any god? Are we beasts, or humans, or gods?