JONATHAN ESPERESTER

In his artistic practice, Esperester takes up archetypal themes from religion, mythology, mysticism and literature - themes that point beyond contemporary discourse and question the human condition in its fundamental cultural patterns. Based on the assumption that all culture has emerged from the imitation of nature, he traces the essence of our artificially created worlds in his works. He even wrests the clinically dead pixels from the unfinished god machine, our young AI, and reinterprets them with organic brushstrokes. In doing so, Esperester makes targeted use of artificial intelligence: machine learning produces cultural clichés, stereotypical representations, which he understands as the starting point for his pictorial invention - comparable to the surrealist approach to dreaming.

The idea of technical purity is painted over with “dirty colors”, the digital errors are brought back into the real world. This creates stage-like, psychologically charged spaces that follow a hallucinogenic logic: broken inner worlds that oscillate between fragment and mirror image. The artist's oeuvre alternates between materiality and transcendence. As in a metaphysical dualism, materiality is imbued with a spirit that manifests itself in shimmering veils, misty textures and a subtle intoxication. In this ambivalence—between body and disembodiment, presence and rapture—Esperester thematizes an inherent longing: the escape from tangible reality into the deep layers of artistic imagination. 

Esperester has already had numerous exhibitions at home and abroad. His career is followed with great interest by several international collectors. 

​

Text by Timon R. Böse, art historian – Berlin, 2025