‘Doppelte Portion.’
 
At his graduation exhibition, German artist Jan Pötter was asked by one of his fellow students if this was the kind of work he produced? His contemporaries seemed surprised by Pötter’s striking, naive, colorful, kind of Jean Dubuffet almost meets Jean-Michel Basquiat artworks. Pötter took this as a compliment because “at a certain level” he wants his work “to surprise and unsettle people.”

His mixed media paintings are powerful, raw, original, and challenging. The viewer is left to question what they are looking at and see the painting’s meaning within a larger cultural, personal, and political context.

Pötter says he makes “unexpected pieces” that “deliberately break with my own and with the audience’s expectations” which is what all great art is supposed to do.

Born in Nordhorn in 1988, Pötter graduated in Fine Art, Painting and Drawing from AKI Enschede, Holland in 2012. He was nominated for a YoungBlood and an ArtOlive Young Talent awards the same year and thereafter exhibited his work in group and solo shows across Holland and Germany. Now based in Berlin, Pötter takes his inspiration from the image saturated multimedia world of news, television, music, film, and his own personal experience.

Though not all of his work is political, some of his most iconic paintings like “Crusie” was inspired by a friend remarking they were taking a cruise ship holiday oblivious to the struggles of refugees families many of whom have drowned at sea trying to reach the safety and security of mainland Europe. Others, like “Great White” suggest the troubling and aggressive predatory behavior of white nations in history. While “Worms and Bird” suggests not so much that the early bird catches the worm but rather all good intentions inevitably come to nought—or food for the worms. Follow Pötter on Instagram.
 

‘The Birth of Joy.’
 

‘Der Schrei des Tauchers’ (‘The Scream of the Divers’)
 
See more of Jan Pötter’s powerful and original work, after the jump…