Ernst Yohji Jaeger

Ernst Yohji Jaeger was born in 1990 in Germany, with German and Japanese family heritage, and by most published accounts grew up in Frankfurt, spending summers in Sapporo, Japan. He studied painting at Tokyo University of the Arts in the O-jun class from 2014 to 2015, then at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in the Henning Bohl class from 2011 to 2019, completing his diploma there in 2019. He lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

His first solo exhibition, Lotosesser, opened at 15Orient in New York in 2020. Quince Moon followed at Croy Nielsen in Vienna in 2021, the same year Ocula Advisory spotlighted his work at Liste Art Fair Basel and he appeared in the group show and I will wear you in my heart of heart at The Flag Art Foundation in New York. Lunatique, a solo show at Crèvecœur in Paris, opened in 2022, and Calamondin, another solo presentation with the gallery, followed in 2026. He has also shown in group contexts including Art Collaboration Kyoto in 2023 and an Art Basel Kabinett presentation with Croy Nielsen in 2024.

Critical commentary on Jaeger centers on the emotional tone of his interiors and figures, often read for their recurring motifs of windows, fruit, and domestic interiors set in a quiet, dreamlike register. His gallery exhibition texts for shows such as Quince Moon at Croy Nielsen and Lunatique at Crèvecœur have framed the work in this vein. His inclusion in group shows and gallery-led fair presentations from 2021 onward reflects an artist whose critical reception so far has come mainly through curatorial and gallery writing tied to specific exhibitions, rather than a wide body of independent museum or press review.

Jaeger's auction record is Untitled, a 2021 painting that sold for USD 190,500 at Sotheby's New York during its Contemporary Evening Sale on 15 May 2025. Sotheby's own recap of the sale and Artsy's editorial coverage of new artist auction records set in 2025 both describe the result as a new high for the artist. Other public sales have been more modest, including a smaller painting, Untitled 5, which sold at Phillips for GBP 18,060, and a further lot, Untitled 4 (two windows), at Christie's. Taken together, the record shows an artist with a very short public sale history in which one strong evening-sale result sits well above a handful of smaller day-sale and specialist prices.

Jaeger's name appears in market and gallery sources in two spellings, Jaeger and Jager, which refer to the same painter; auction houses and his own signature use the ASCII form Jaeger. There is no catalogue raisonne, so provenance and attribution should be checked against his two representing galleries. His reported museum-adjacent holdings, including foundations such as Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Lafayette Anticipations, come from a single gallery-published list rather than confirmation from each institution directly, so that list should be treated as indicative, not verified. Most importantly, his auction history is extremely short. A single evening-sale result of USD 190,500 in May 2025 currently defines his public market, and collectors should weigh that figure against the small number of other, lower-priced sales rather than treat it as a stable benchmark.