Marsyas' Bicycle

DIRK JAN JAGER

7 Mar 2010
14 Mar 2010
  • Studio
  • Tweede Oosterparkstaat 216, Amsterdam

Flann O'Brien's novel 'The Third Policeman' (1967) introduces us to a nameless narrator. Because the narrator of the story is nameless when confronted with an accusation of murder, he points out that unnamed he is invisible to the law.

Throughout the story we are led into a realm of circular cycles,
transmissions and transferable proximity. Perhaps the most familiar image is that of the bicycle-obsessed policeman who, as atoms from his bottom exchange with atoms from his bicycle saddle, becomes a kind of centaur, part policeman part bicycle.

Quite apart from the comic implications of such an exchange it is also an erotic fetishistic mechanism, which is perhaps the reverse (mirroring) of the story of Marsyas, a half man half beast, who lost his hide because of Apollo's jealousy at his skill.

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Dirk Jan Jager - bron

With:
Dirk Jan Jager

So what is all this about? And where does the painter come in? Skins and
exchange, violence and ecstasy. In this new body of work Dirk Jan Jager
has returned to competitive sports. But here we are entering, tumbling
into the territory of O'Brien's exchange: the serge clad mythic
policeman's bottom and the leather hide saddle (perhaps made from a
scrap of the discarded hide of Marsyas).
These paintings are skins both physical and metaphorical. Both occupy
the space of shamanic exchanges: becoming Woman (Navratilova's 1-3)
suspended as she brandishes her racket like some mediaeval depiction of
Saint Michael, or the ecstatic boxer more reminiscent of Bernini's Saint
Theresa. These canvases are themselves flayed skins, hot with blood and
sweat drenched, the site of the tactile surgical exchange: material into
action into image.

Text: Simon Ferdinando
dirkjanjager.nl