Jonathan Meese
DRAGONBABY “Johnny”
(Erzmuttersöhnchen on the Rocks)
6 September–20 October 2012
Tim Van Laere Gallery
Verlatstraat 23-25
2000 Antwerp
Belgium
T +32 3 257 14 17
F +32 3 257 14 25
g@timvanlaeregallery.com
www.timvanlaeregallery.com
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Tim Van Laere Gallery is pleased to announce DRAGONBABY “Johnny” (Erzmuttersöhnchen on the Rocks), Jonathan Meese’s first Belgian solo exhibition.
Jonathan Meese (Born in 1970 in Tokyo, lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg) is renowned for his multi-faceted work, including wildly exuberant paintings, installations, ecstatic performances and a powerful body of sculptures in a variety of media. Apparently effortlessly, he has developed in all genres an independent and at the same time unique vocabulary that gives his work a variety, visual energy and quality which, according to Robert Fleck, has been unheard of since Picasso. All of Meese’s work share a humor tending towards the grotesque, as well as a powerful, original creative will. Both are driven and supported by a striving for a rule of art, the dictatorship of art. What is meant here is the development of a new world order where art is the legislative power, and free play the foundation of all life and creation.This utopian approach runs like a leitmotif through all his works and brings his individual parts of the oeuvre together to form the Jonathan Meese Gesamtkunstwerk. He does not aim at anarchy, but rather the rule of metabolic necessity: ‘Art is total play.’ From this principle, he deconstructs, ornamentalises and caricatures all forms, words, and symbols, stripping them of their original semantic meaning. The use of historically loaded and taboo symbols such as the swastika, iron cross, or Latin cross in art is not a problem for Meese. On the contrary, art provides new possibilities for dealing with them.*
Jonathan Meese has exhibited globally with museums and leading art galleries including solo shows at Gem, The Hague; CAC Málaga, Málaga; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; De Appel Center for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam; group shows at Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow; MARTa Herford, Herford; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Saatchi Gallery, London; MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York.
For further information please contact the gallery.
*Excerpt from a text by Doris Mampe
*Image above:
Jonathan Meese, Dr. Maximalus Kunstus Fullus Staatschef “Richardus Wagnerus Im Erzalltotalkunstyrn”, 2012. 211 x 422.9 cm x 3.3 cm. 3 panels, oil, acrylic and mixed media on canvas. Photography Jan Bauer. Net / Courtesy Jonathan Meese. Com Courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp.
