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March - April 2009
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Isobel Harbison
 Jan Albers, aiEi, 2008. Colored pencil collage and badges on paper, 200 x 140 cm. Private Collection, Paris. Courtesy of the artist and Van Horn, Düsseldorf.
Jan Albers’ drawings are abstract and figurative, often hugely colorful and sometimes expanding beyond the page and onto the gallery wall. The artist creates his portraits and abstract designs from several layers of paper which are cut or punched to reveal intricate matrices of crosshatched lines, where pattern and density define the works’ various features. As the colors weave in and around one another a psychedelia emerges a reference to the 1970s, emphasized not only by the many subjects’ bearded features and rays of light, but also by their consistent old school Perspex framing. Many of Albers’ recent works are portraits of mythological and popular cult figures. Like his drawings, his titles have several figurative components which are refined down until they become abstract and almost unrecognizable from their original form. In this way both James Joyce’s portrait and name are cropped down and jazzed up to JjoyO.bubbleHeD (2007). The play between title and form is also important in Albers’ work. His more abstract aiEi (2008) began with the artist’s interest in the organization Amnesty International; he pared its name down to ai, and then combined in one word with the German translation of egg (Ei). From here, the composition adopts its egg shape, with colorful crosshatched lines and layers of paper, to the surface of which artist-designed Amnesty International badges are pinned. The leap from title to image and back again accentuates the movement between the drawings’ layers and crosshatched lines. As such these works playfully and dynamically knit together both popular and political symbols.
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