Jakob Steen

Jakob Steen is an multi-disciplinary artist working across different mediums such as painting, sculpture, and installations. Steen's paintings have a soft expression that blurs the lines between figuration and abstraction, with surreal and ambiguous figures set against intensely colorful backgrounds, adding a sensory element. Intrigued by the symbiotic relationship between sensory impressions and memories, Steen draws inspiration from various personal experiences and emotional states. 

Using the pre-conscious experiential logic of dreams, Steen's work reflects a long-standing fascination with the ways in which sensory cues can be adapted to nourish and stimulate the feeling individual. Steen has also developed a signature material repertoire, with his preference for a tactile fish glue medium when painting supplemented by the use of thick hand-mixed scagliola in his more sculptural work. Through a process of meticulous layering, his work is both time-based and meditative in its insistence on the importance of establishing certain mental conditions before anything else can follow.

Jakob Steen (b. 1986) is a Danish artist living and working in Præstø (DK). He began his career in 2015 and later moved to Puerto Rico to find both peace and inspiration to create. Steen has since exhibited his work both internationally and in Denmark, most recently Scorpio Medicine w. Bricks Gallery at Oremandsgaard Gods (Præstø, DK, 2024), Lite Galbi at Bricks Gallery (Copenhagen, DK, 2023), and Runde 2  a duo show with Jakob Oksbjerg at Gisselfeld Kloster (Haslev, DK, 2022).

Portrait photo: Michella Bredahl