SCULPTURES

“Jacques combines stone with bronze. There is a kind of symbiosis in the materials and anonymity in the figures, as though he was searching for the Universal man. Often though, there are limbs missing, and holes blown in him, and his skin is scarred and broken as if we had just dug out of the dust some ancient figure buried centuries ago by the ashes of Vesuvius!

In these modern times we are bombarded from all sides by images of conflict; whether it’s Ferguson, or Syria or Marikana, people simply don’t get on with one another. All too often we see people scarred by violence of one sort or another. Strangely enough, Jacques figures, although they are scorched and fragmented, aren’t like that because of an act of violence; they’re like that because that’s simply the nature of things! Every natural object has a time span: people get old, and their bodies change, and they die. Trees grow tall, they lose their leaves, grow even taller but they must also return to the earth. Hills, bumps in the ground are mere remnants of great mountains.”
– Carl Jeppe

PAINTINGS

“Jacques’ painting too has a hasty look, the urgent jabbing of brushstrokes suggest that the artist MUST put down the image that’s caught his eye before it slips from his grasp. The subject matter is ordinary things and people from his environment, because Jacques is not searching among the “accepted” norms of beauty. There’s no cover-up. On the contrary, he often looks for and emphasizes the mistakes and aberrations in his images.”
– Carl Jeppe