Dr. Socrates: Jonathan MEESE

Jonathan MEESE, born in Toyko in 1970, is a young German artist who lives and works in Berlin and Hambrug. He was well known for having always collected various kinds of information for his work, constantly observed and recorded something through vast amount of drawings, paintings, photographs, books, brochures, and films. He gained international fame in 1998 Berlin Biennale, and has exhibited numerous works in many solo and group exhibitions in areas of Europe and US. Arario Gallery that held not only solo exhibitions of two great German artists, Thomas Ruff and Sigmar Polke, but also a planned show to display a lot of painting works of the young artists in Leipzig who are constituting a new trend both in Germany and abroad, is pleased to introduce another aspect of contemporary German art through this Jonathan MEESE’s solo exhibition.

His recent works cover a wide scope of genre including object, installation, collage, painting, drawing, sculpture, performance. He creates totally unexpected, unfamiliar and unusual meanings by freely rearranging everyday common objects, and his large-scale installation occupying a large area with all kinds of objects is quite overwhelming. His paintings, which, in some respect, seem to an extension of the tradition of German Expressionism in their wild brushwork, bold colors, and distorted forms, successfully establish his own pictorial language through metaphorical images and texts. On the other hand, he produces figure sculptures so distorted as to be seen as mere accumulated mass, which are founded on his drawings, works of art in themselves, and gives impromptu and theatrical performances after making up as different roles. In this way, as is shown by the fact that his favorite expression is the word ‘total’, his art world is composed of such diverse genres.

MEESE’s artistic content comprehends all forms of traditional cultures and modern popular cultures ranging from traditional myth, classic music and literature, modern and contemporary history and philosophy to film directors and actors in 1960’s and 1970’s: such names as Wagner, Sade, Ezra Pound, Nero, Hitler, Stalin, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Stanley Kubrick and etc. are frequently found in his works, and different ages and different cultural products are intermingled to make new significances. He adds his unique texts to these works, creating a new intersection of image and text. By scribbling nonstandard words, slang, jargons, codes, jokes, newly coined words, as well as the language peculiar to him(he is known to have held his own arbitrary way of writing and speaking since his childhood) on books, photographs, posters, paintings, and the walls of exhibition room, MEESE fiercely attacks contemporary German language and culture in general. Through all these works, he talks about war, power, violence, insanity, death, sexuality, and so on, revealing the irrational and unreasonable aspects hidden behind modern society that has worshiped logic and reason and tracing back the power beneath them.

In this sense, Arario Gallery would like to illuminate the varied artistic worlds of Jonathan MEESE. Total 11 paintings including the large-size one (3.7m×10m, 2005), 5 sculptures modeled after Nietzsche, a German philosopher and Parzival, a hero of the Grail quest, and 41 drawings created with the sculpture of Nietzsche will be displayed. And his installation entitled (1998) will be also shown. Especially, the artist’s performance that will be given in Arario Green Sculpture Park on the opening day, Sep. 10. 7:00pm is expected to epitomize his art world itself. He, the artist who crosses many genres, gathers numberless images, and expresses them explosively, never provides explanation about his complex and multi-layered works. He just enjoys constantly presenting overflowing images. Thus, it is up to viewers to disentangle the meaning by tracking down the various clues the artist put in his art. Arario Gallery is going to leave another clues allowing as many interpretations as viewers in this solo exhibition.