Jan Kaesbach graduated 2012
'This work was made as a response to Jeff Wall’s ‘Picture for Women’ (1979) which itself is a photographic recreation of Manet’s ‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergère’. Whereas Wall’s photograph is portraying the gaze of the male artist onto the model and his control over it, in ‘Picture for Jeff’ there is no difference made between photographer and photographed subject.
The second picture negates the Fernweh (sense of longing for an unknown, faraway place), revealing that the person is not looking and longing for the possibilities the ships in front of her might represent, but is literally re-locating her contemplation on herself. As opposed to Wall’s image where the focus lies in the relationship between the male artist, and Friedrich’s painting where it lies in the unknown, in ‘Picture for Jeff’ the essence of the work seems to lie in the almost self-obsessed (re)presentation of the self.'
