ARTIST
JAKOB OJANEN
Art at the Plaza
From the series “These Walls Don’t Lie”
The artist Jakob Ojanen (b. 1980, Västerås) is a Swedish visual artist based in Stockholm. In the series These Walls Don’t Lie he combines photo-based material with painting: photographs of worn wall surfaces are printed on canvas and reworked with vinyl paint – a method that plays with the boundary between documentation and painterly illusion.
Background & style
Jakob Ojanen is interested in the abstract traces that arise in public spaces – painted over, erased, or weather-beaten surfaces where the image is reshaped over time. His works highlight these everyday “paintings” and shift the viewer’s perception of what is made and what is found.
Education
Ojanen was educated at Konstfack (MFA) and pursued further studies as a project student at the Royal Institute of Art. He was born in Västerås and lives and works in Stockholm.
Working methods & technique
- The series These Walls Don’t Lie is based on pigment prints on canvas, which Ojanen then continues to paint over with vinyl paint. The combination of photography and painting makes the surfaces initially appear purely painted, only to reveal their photographic base upon closer inspection.
The works “These Walls Don’t Lie”
The works in the series often appear as “Untitled (These Walls Don’t Lie)” in varying formats, but with the same distinct materiality: pigment print and vinyl on canvas. The motifs are taken from walls in public space and highlight the unexpected closeness between found traces and abstract painting.