Feininger-Galerie

1. HEILBUTTN'S DER KUNST (FORMZUCKI), 2006/2011, Lithograph on Woodcut

Jonathan Meese is one of the most successful and scintillating contemporary German artists. His oeuvre is comprehensive, obsessive and radical. Meese works in all techniques, combining painting, drawing and sculpture with collages, texts and collections of material into sprawling installations in which he propagates the "dictatorship of art" as a long-term, Utopian objective. His work, which includes performances, films, artist's books and theatre projects, has a decided action-character. Born in 1970 in Tokyo and trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg, Meese became well-known all of a sudden in 1998 with his contribution to the first Berlin Biennale. Since 2003 around one hundred graphic print works have arisen. The mainly large lithographs, engravings and wood-cuts portray, for the most part, historical and mythological figures who, in their graphic sparseness, become abbreviations for cultural history and an alter ego of the artist. More strongly than in all his other works, in Meese's concentrated and expressive prints, the eruptive image-creation and the artist's quick, indeed ecstatic, mode of working become perceptible. The exhibition at the Lyonel Feininger Galerie presents the print oeuvre of Jonathan Meese for the first time in its full compass.

Translated from the German by Dr Michael Eldred, artefact text & translation, Cologne

KUNST IST KEINE MICKRIGE KÜNSTLERKNEIPE, ZUM GLÜCK, 2007/2010, Etching