Issue 8, Profiles

Ernst Yohji Jaeger

Exposing the wonderment of the world

Words EMILY MCDERMOTT

Photography JULIUS HIRTZBERGER

The lights are dimmed, the blackened sky visible through old factory-casement windows. Candles illuminate an ad hoc dinner table set low to the ground; guests sit on oriental rugs covering a wooden floor. A diverse array of exhibition catalogs and artist books line the windowsills, with an equally diverse array of artworks hung in a single line along the walls. Under the warm light of a floor lamp, the 22 cards of the tarot’s Major Arcana sit atop a plywood table. This could be a scene in a timeless, ethereal painting by the artist Ernst Yohji Jaeger, but it is, in fact, the setting for what Jaeger called the “Fools Banquet,” a dinner and one-night-only exhibition at his Vienna studio marking the culmination of a course he taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic. Each tarot card on display corresponds to an artwork on the wall, offering a floor plan and conceptual orientation to the pieces; each student and lecturer, Jaeger included, drew a card from the deck and completed a work with their fated arcana in mind.

“In this class, I was focusing on the theme of where art comes from and why we do it,” the 34-year-old artist explains during a video call. “And Tarot can be a tool to read life in a poetic way, a key to reading the world and your life as art. It’s also interesting to get into the symbols, numbers, and colors, which are incredibly rich.”

The concept for the banquet stemmed from the course’s overarching ethos, which reflects Jaeger’s own approach to artmaking: to investigate and reveal the wonderment and miracles inherent to every aspect of life, no matter how seemingly mundane. In his own work, Jaeger depicts intimate moments through a unique painterly style blending influences that range from art historical icons to manga and anime to videogames and memes. Importantly, among these influences, there is no hierarchy. A painter he discovers on a blog is just as important as careful studies of Paul Cézanne, Helene Schjerfbeck, or Felice Casorati. His early memory of standing under the legs of a Louise Bourgeois Maman is regarded on the same plane as his days spent playing Final Fantasy. The work Untitled 1917 (Study for an Angel / Tear Through Time) (2024), for example, depicts an androgynous figure laying in a lakeside field reading a book. At first glance, it’s an unassuming scene, reveling in the beauty of a quiet moment to oneself. Yet on second glance and with inference from the title, the viewer might notice that one page of the book features a reproduction of Francis Picabia’s drawing Untitled (1917) and another references Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing Head of a Young Woman (Study for the Angel of the Virgin of the Rocks) (1483–85). At the same time, a somewhat cliché tear emerges from the Da Vinci drawing, adding a sense of both humor and sadness, while also shifting the plane of perception.

Now based in Vienna, Jaeger was born and raised in Frankfurt and spent summers in Sapporo, Japan, at his grandfather’s house. Regardless of geographic location, he was always surrounded by creativity: His father is a writer, and his grandmother was a pianist. His uncle is an artist, and his aunt draws manga. Jaeger grew up playing video games and watching anime, finding solace and inspiration in the fantastical worlds and their illustrators’ use of symbolism. As a kid, he always enjoyed drawing but began taking it seriously when, at age 16, he faced personal troubles and dropped out of school, becoming what he describes as a “shut-in” for two years. “It was a really angsty teenage time, and I struggled to find meaning in school or imagining a regular job,” he says. “I felt like I had to figure out something I was good at and carve out my own space of belonging.” He considered becoming an apprentice for a sushi chef as well as other pathways, but ultimately, he found the most meaning in painting and drawing.