Jens Einhorn (b. 1980) graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as a
Master Student with Professor Tal R, and lives and works in Berlin. Solo
exhibitions include *TRACING REMAINS*, *VITA PARCOURS*, and We Are All
We Have, all at DUVE Berlin, Germany; Electric Eyes, Luce Gallery,
Turin; and Too Much Future, Bruch & Dallas, Köln. Group shows
include Ornis A. Gallery, Amsterdam; G2 Kunsthalle Leipzig, Germany;
Annarumma Gallery, Naples; the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples;
and C. Rockefeller Center for the Contemporary Arts, Dresden, among
others. Jens is represented by DUVE Gallery, Berlin.

Einhorn’s body of work develops his interest in channeling the assertive
energy of the urban periphery. His new works incorporate shapes cut
from tarpaper, layered starkly above a vibrant collage of fabric,
acrylic, and spray paint. Their gritty, plant-like silhouettes allude to
East Germany, where Einhorn grew up and whose barren city landscape he
explored as a teenager. Einhorn’s wilderness is the concrete jungle,
where leaves cover tarpaper rooves and blend with the colors of graffiti
and rust. Describing his interests, Einhorn mentions the abandoned
shelters and overgrown junkyards that exist between the urban and
natural worlds. Like Einhorn’s canvases, these plots are spaces of
collage and metamorphosis. As associating our personal memories gives
meaning to others’ discarded objects, Einhorn’s collages are full of
suggestion and opportunity.

Einhorn’s working method, evident visually, takes places between
instinct, determination, and condition. In some works, rhythmic
territories of color give a spontaneous impression. In others, built-up
layers of tarpaper attest to decisions accumulated, revisited, and
rethought. Difficult to handle and cut, tarpaper resists intention;
Einhorn writes that it “often demands its own way.” Einhorn’s act of
making parallels the act of being in the metropolis, where impulse and
jeopardy accompany every plan.

Tensions between what is manmade and what is natural give force to Jens
Einhorn’s East Germany and present Berlin. Einhorn’s paintings harmonize
design and intuition, motion and rest, and freedom and control.