When Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history, it was because neoliberalism had miraculously reconciled the radical politics of emancipation with the de-regulated libertarianism of the free market. Better to enjoy freedom of choice with capital, rather than no freedom at all. This apparent end of history effectively rendered Modernism redundant—since what further need for things like teleology when the liberal project had already achieved its goal. The idea of the future lurched, with Modernity’s momentum stalled—the expansive big-bang beginning to contract, progress reversed—the advent of a new genealogical revisionism, a new undustrial age in which all the evils of colonial accumulation are retrospectively expunged, with persisting institutions of capital avoiding scrutiny—the spirit of the new voluntary agent, the artisanal entrepreneur invested at a precapitalist era, so as to naturalise neoliberalism at a fundamentally primitive level. 
 

With the Age of Enlightenment drawn back into the Age of Light Entertainment, emancipatory politics has come to be regarded as a sentimental irrelevance, expressing a common yearning for a time when the counterculture possessed razor sharp teeth. But how did the counterculture come to graduate to the mainstream, such that radical culture (with its urgent discursive critique) has become the chosen weapon of global gentrification? With counterculture now raised to the edifice of official orthodox, we continue our liberal dissent against Capitalism whilst simultaneously participating in capitalist exchange. Museums proliferate as protest culture performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue consuming with impunity... a certain cultural paleo-conservatism has delivered to us a new fundamentalist humanism, not Fukuyama’s "last man," but now desiring-machines fixated by “identity," commodification essentialised, beings brimming with wellness, a new-improved cultural savant–the fetishized neoliberalithic saviour come to restore our faith in the newly reinvigorated eco Capital, since nothing impedes the theology of optimism.

– Jake Chapman
 

Jake Chapman was born in Cheltenham, United Kingdom in 1966. 
 

Work by Chapman has been exhibited in various institutions including the Tate Britain in London, United Kingdom; Brandts Museum in Odense, Denmark; the Serpentine Gallery in London, United Kingdom; Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev, Ukraine; The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia; Fondazione Museo Pino Pascali in Polignano a Mare, Italy; the Hastings Museum in Hastings, United Kingdom; Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover, Germany; Tate Liverpool in Liverpool, United Kingdom; Kunsthaus Bregenz in Bregenz, Austria; Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf, Germany; Modern Art Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, New York; Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Germany; the National Center of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Russia; Kunstverein Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany; the British Museum in London, United Kingdom; Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille in Lille, France; Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany; the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, United Kingdom; The François Pinault Collection in Venice, Italy; the Royal Academy of Arts in London, United Kingdom; the Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA in Helsinki, Finland. He lost the Turner Prize to Grayson Perry, Tate Britain in 2003.
 

Jake Chapman lives and works in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom.