Amani M. Heywood
Marcus Jansen
"Pioneering Modern Urban Expressionism Through Social Critique & Visual Disruption"
Interview conducted by Amani Heywood
Urban Expressionism was used as a loose term in the 90’s to describe graffiti art... I was flattered that an art historian of Jerome’s caliber gave the meaning some context, and if anything, relieved a stigma. - Marcus
All photos are provided by artist
Renowned artist Marcus Jansen, credited as a pioneer of Modern Urban Expressionism, merges raw abstraction with bold social critique. In this revealing interview, Jansen discusses his unique approach to art—one that disrupts traditional norms while confronting contemporary injustices.
Drawing inspiration from graffiti culture, Abstract Expressionism, and the Ashcan School, Jansen’s work captures the tension between urban decay and human resilience. His signature visual language—featuring recurring symbols like tires and life preservers—invites multiple interpretations, blending personal experience with universal themes.
Jansen’s art challenges viewers to rethink history, power structures, and societal narratives, whether displayed in museums or echoing the streets that inspire him. With exhibitions worldwide, his work bridges cultures, proving that urban critique transcends borders.
Ultimately, Jansen’s paintings are more than aesthetic statements—they are provocations, urging audiences to engage in critical thought and see the unseen realities of modern life.
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You’ve been credited as the innovator of "Modern Urban Expressionism: ; blending social critique with raw abstraction. How do you define this term, and what distinguishes it from traditional Abstract Expressionism or the Ashcan School?
When it comes to art history and identifying or describing art movements, it is helpful for academia to give things titles. For me personally, I just paint. I do not hold myself to any standard or expectation. If there is one given, I typically want to break away from it. Urban Expressionism was used as a loose term in the 90’s to describe graffiti art and often had anegative context in the press. So I was flattered that an art historian of Jerome’s caliber gave the
meaning some context, and if anything, relieved a stigma. My work was heavily influenced by the pioneers of graffiti writing in New York City and Europe, so it is natural that there is a relation to graffiti writing, Abstract Expressionism and German Expressionism were all reactions to times of poverty and war. Traditional Abstract Expressionism was a way to express feeling unattached from the material or physical world and express emotions directly without objective subject matter. The Ashcan School was a rebellious realistic movement during a time when the United States in the 1930s experienced poverty during the Great Depression. It is safe to say that I was attracted to works that came from some form of social unrest and struggle. The Ashcan School focused on
depicting urban life with a focus on everyday scenes and working-class subjects. Looking at my early work from 1996 on, that is what it was until the early part of this century. It gave me my first notoriety in a contemporary context revisiting landscape painting while being critical versus pretty paintings that projected power. In my work, urban inner city landscapes had no power and reflected our times.
Jerome Donson compared your work to the Ashcan School’s socio-political commentary. How do you balance aesthetic innovation with the urgency of your messages—especially in today’s polarized climate?
What helps is that I draw from contemporary issues while drawing parallels with systemic colonial power structures that are still in place and that have consistently caused the same outcomes. For me, it is about studying history, visually as well as historically, and then allowing things to channel through while questioning previously held traditional norms. Today’s polarized climate is a direct result of the erasure and distortion of our history and are not addressed in the mainstream. In my paintings, I start the disruption of these structures visually and historically, which then becomes the first step to rebuilding a path to reconnect.
You’ve developed a recurring visual language (e.g., tires, life preservers) that appears across your work. How did this symbolic lexicon emerge, and how do you decide when an object earns its place in your personal iconography?
With most art, like music or acting, creation is something that happens when you are lost in a painting and there are gaps between the realities you encounter and perceive and a realm in which you find the happy accidents or unknown things that make you uncomfortable. I would like to believe that the vocabulary and symbols I have found are a combination of the things I personally experience, feel or take in and the result of what “just happens” in that process. I typically am attracted to symbols that hint of some sort of broader meaning and may have
multiple interpretations, but many come from an impulsive, strong intuitiveness to include them.
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Your paintings merge surreal abstraction with tangible urban debris. Why is it important for you to disrupt literal representation, and how does this tension reflect your view of modern society?
I do not experience the world in realistic terms or interpret subjects realistically. When I see an object or person, I get a feeing that is more about what I sense about the subject. That allows me to explore more than the eye can see, and I am able to then translate that into what Francis Bacon called “concentrated reality”—something that gives the viewer a deeper insight than what everyone else can already see with their own eyes. The other part is that I equate reality as we see it with realism in painting, and abstraction with ambiguity and abstraction. To me, that is
more of an experienced sensation than just limited to just one or the other.
Like Rauschenberg, you integrate found objects into your work. But unlike his Combines, your
objects resist logical interpretation. What power does ambiguity hold for you in confronting
viewers?
I was first introduced to Robert Rauschenberg through a book I ran into in around 1984. I had never seen his work before and knew nothing about him, but it struck me as something I had never seen before, and it was that feeling that stayed with me over the many years to come. I met Bob 30 years later in 2004, which is probably one of the highlights of my life. Unlike Rauschenberg, who used materials randomly and composed them as pure abstraction, breaking new ground doing so, I then decided to use them as symbols that give a sense of subject matter or
storytelling, and in some cases, they turn into narratives. This may again be me comparing abstraction and realism to convey being one foot in and one foot out of reality.
You reject "fixed canon[s]"; in favor of subjectivity. Which conventions do you deliberately
challenge, and how does this freedom shape your creative process?
Most of my work begins with disruption. If I see something pictorially or historically, it must be first of all be disrupted. From there, it takes on a life of its own and becomes a product of contemporary commentary with the ability to show me something new, something I have not seen before. The idea is to replace the known with the unknown.
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Tires recur in your work—as trash, life preservers, or symbols of movement/danger. What drew
you to this object, and how does its meaning shift across different pieces?
The tires started around 2006 and became stronger in 2008 with larger works. Rauschenberg used tires, as well, but in a different way. For me, they were symbols of my own life’s mileage left behind. But as in all my work, my personal cryptic or subliminal messages are displayed in a way that they become social commentary so everyone can see or relate to them in one way or another. As art historian Brooke Lynn Mcgowen said, “These are social commentary paintings not about me per se, but certainly influenced by my own experiences,” which still makes them somewhat autobiographical.
Your work is collected by institutions from the Smithsonian to MMOMA. How do you hope
your art functions in museum spaces versus the streets that inspire it?
As a bridge. Given the negative condescension that street art and graffiti art received in the 70’s, 80’s and beyond, I had always hoped to take elements of that energy and express them in a way that would reach as many audiences as possible. Having grown up between two vastly different worlds that were obsessed with graffiti in the 1980’s I think it was just in my nature to do so. I was situated in such a way that it was a natural effect of my progression from seeing the very early stages of graffiti writing in the Bronx and the later 80’s stages in Germany, which became
the leading location outside of New York, to continue to develop it in its own way. The outcome was a bridge between worlds that have long brought cultures together.
Having exhibited from Milan to Taiwan, how does your critique of urban life translate across
cultures? Do you adapt your visual language for different audiences?
My urban critique is meant to be universal, and although I am heavily influenced by U.S. critical and urban marginalized environments, the problem of poverty and social injustices doesn’t stop there. My hope is that the issues I first saw in in the Bronx can be a focal point for a larger dialogue. Hip Hop culture was a catalyst that reached a wide audience because it created a path to communicate with the world, and the reason why the world responded is because many places identified with the conditions it came from or did not and wanted to know more about it. That always impressed me.
Your work excavates overlooked urban realities. What do you want viewers to *notice* about
the world after experiencing your paintings?
Because I paint for myself, I hope my works are able to spark emotions and feelings about subjects in others the same way they do for me. It is a way of seeing things differently, and depending on the audience, it challenges different points of view, which is always the beginning of a conversation. I think the works have the power to do several things. One is to challenge people’s previous beliefs, and another is to confirm certain beliefs, depending on the audience and what they bring to the table intellectually, historically and artistically. In any case, the works
hopefully encourage a critical thinking, which in our current environment we are drifting far away from.
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