May 2019
INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION
Sarah Jentsch
INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION
Sarah Jentsch
Artist Statement
For centuries, Western culture has had a fascination with morbid death veiled in beauty. We balk at death when faced with it head on, treating it as a feared and ignored unknown rather than an eventual part, and celebration, of a life well lived. However, morbidity, especially involving youth, is common in literature and plays. Death is linked intrinsically with a morbid eroticism, a forbidden fruit of Western culture—to be enjoyed and studied behind closed doors. Keeping this in mind, my work connects the viewer to a spirituality and an afterlife, a welcoming side of an otherwise unknowable world. Death must be acknowledged as a completion of a pattern, rather than hushed with euphemisms and whispers.
In modern times, though technology details the intricacies of a dying body better than ever before, it can only document to a certain point. The fate of an individual’s consciousness after death is impossible to know for those who remain behind. Innate mystery lives in death, a spirituality and complete unknown that humanity has explained for millennia through hundreds of different religious mythos, folktales and beliefs. My work employs a series of symbols, personal to me, from both life and death to illustrate my thoughts. For instance, birds have always implied a connection to an afterlife. In my life they were the first things I saw die, and how I came to understand the passing of life. Ultimately my work lies in the in-between, a world straddling science and religion, life and death.
For centuries, Western culture has had a fascination with morbid death veiled in beauty. We balk at death when faced with it head on, treating it as a feared and ignored unknown rather than an eventual part, and celebration, of a life well lived. However, morbidity, especially involving youth, is common in literature and plays. Death is linked intrinsically with a morbid eroticism, a forbidden fruit of Western culture—to be enjoyed and studied behind closed doors. Keeping this in mind, my work connects the viewer to a spirituality and an afterlife, a welcoming side of an otherwise unknowable world. Death must be acknowledged as a completion of a pattern, rather than hushed with euphemisms and whispers.
In modern times, though technology details the intricacies of a dying body better than ever before, it can only document to a certain point. The fate of an individual’s consciousness after death is impossible to know for those who remain behind. Innate mystery lives in death, a spirituality and complete unknown that humanity has explained for millennia through hundreds of different religious mythos, folktales and beliefs. My work employs a series of symbols, personal to me, from both life and death to illustrate my thoughts. For instance, birds have always implied a connection to an afterlife. In my life they were the first things I saw die, and how I came to understand the passing of life. Ultimately my work lies in the in-between, a world straddling science and religion, life and death.
Sarah is a painter and printmaker currently based in Texas. She is influenced by the duality of modern life, and how conflicting themes such as science/spirituality, life/death, and rural/urban coexist. Inspired by nature, she uses a series of personal and archetypal symbols to convey her observations. She graduated with her Bachelors Degree in Fine Art from Stephen F Austin State University in December of 2018.