Despite the seemingly innocuous surface, Jakob Boeskov’s work is charged with the artist’s usual sarcasm. The work adds its “commercial messages” to the countless other offers and exhortations that confront us in urban spaces. Klaus —the shaman with a Danish name— offers massage, future and love in bold white lettering on a black background (all available within the “4300” postal code area) informing us of his e-mail and his PO box: “postbox 89, 4300 Holbæk” which in fact belongs to Holbæk County Council.
The work is also inhabited by a circular pseudo-religious motif, probably the Hindu god Shiva. Additionally, we see a lotus blossom and the divine frog in the center of a golden fruit or vulva: the source of all creation. White smoke spreads from a bottle at the bottom of the work, outlining a genie floating in the lotus position. The drawing is a copy of the Swami Meditating-figure by American illustrator Cory Thoman — a common figure on the internet.
Boeskov’s work ironizes a contemporary flirtation with spirituality and the widespread yearning for self-realization, love and insight, presented in a superficial New-Age fashion, with a smattering of world religions, targeting people busily rushing by or sitting in their car waiting for the lights to change.
b.1973 in Elsinore, lives and works in NYC.
