Jakob Boeskov

Jakob Salomon Boeskov (born March 23, 1973) is a Danish artist, based in New York.

Boeskov is born in Ellsinore, Denmark and has a background in architecture and comics.

Boeskovs comic Flax Letters (1995-1998) was of a satirical, autobiographical character, and in the comics real and fictive characters appears on the same pages. His frequent Flax Letter bashings of hippies and artists, earned Boeskov a reputation as a conservative, an "art hater", and an anti-feminist, allegations that the artist have always denied, insisting that he was only being "avant-garde".

He has since 1998 focused his attention on art and has worked with his own homemade artistic concept, Fictionism.

The main idea of Fictionism is to "test out futuristic ideas today"

Boeskov's most well known piece is "My Doomsday Weapon" (2002) where he, together with journalist Mads Brügger and industrial designer Kristian Von Bengtsson, created a fake hi-tech weapon called ID Sniper rifle. This fictive weapon could shoot of GPS chips into demonstrators, so that the police later could locate them and "apply the punishment." Thanks to Mads Brügger, Boeskov brought drawings of this weapon to a weapons fair in Beijing, China, where the weapon received positive reactions from real weapons dealers, politicians and policemen.

In 2004 Boeskov along with Mads Brügger created a fictitious, Danish, pro-Bush campaign, called, "Danes for Bush". The project was an ironic commentary to the Republican Party and its supporters in Denmark and USA. The documentations of this project was shown in a 3-part TV series, aired by the Danmarks Radio.

General

The work of Boeskov has "satirical-demonical" character, and is often about the interplay of fiction and reality. General themes in his work is: Entertainment, politics, sex, his own life and the Scandinavian welfare state.

Boeskov has motioned artist such as The Yesmen, Robert Crumb, Richard Corben, Haldor Laxness, Bill Drummond, Chris Burden, Cindy Sherman, Public Enemy, David Lynch, Lars von Trier og Phillip K. Dick and Vallie Export.

His work also seems to be influenced by Scandinavian and international Situationism. He is currently working with drawings and video and is working on a film named "Suicide."

References