From 12 January to 1 March, the Bernier/Eliades gallery presents the first solo exhibition in Greece by German artist Jonathan Meese.
Jonathan Meese (b. 1970, Tokyo) emerged on the international art scene in 1998 and is now regarded as one of the most successful proponents of contemporary art. He is known for his multifaceted work, which includes exuberant paintings (in which personal hieroglyphs and collage are tangled together), installations, ecstatic performances, sculptures, drawings and stage sets for theatre productions. In this exhibition the artist will present a series of new sculptures and paintings.
At the core of Meese’s work remains a relentless sense of history, out of which emerge figures, symbols and objects that later become a mythological universe that complements his work and drags the viewer into it by force.
Meese spreads his materials across large surfaces and arranges mythological figures, collage, colour and fragments on them in a powerful, expressive way. In his work one can detect a particular fascination with the most aggressive or tragic figures of history. Personalities such as Nero, Imhotep, Caligula, Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler have appeared in his works, where they may coexist with self-portraits of Meese himself, as well as with references to literary passages from history or ideological and political statements.
His new paintings are the fruit of a new phase of exploration of the medium. The canvases overflow with collage, slogans and graffiti, balancing somewhere between humour and violence. The artist orchestrates a clash between varnishes and impastos, dynamic brushstrokes and fine lines.
His sculptures arise from a personal mythological universe that combines the forces of good and evil with references to antiquity, history and contemporary popular culture.
Works by Jonathan Meese are held in many public and private collections, including MoMA, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, New Zealand; and the Saatchi Collection. He has taken part in important exhibitions such as the Berlin Biennale, 1998; “Generation Z”, PS1, New York, 1999; “New Blood”, Saatchi Collection, London, 2004; and “Dionysiac”, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2005. In December 2010, the MOCA North Miami hosted a major solo exhibition of the artist’s work.
He has given significant performances, among them an improvisation for Wagner’s Parsifal at the Staatsoper, Berlin, 2005, and Noël Coward is Back at Tate Modern, 2006. In 2010 he designed the sets for the world premiere of the opera “Dionysus”, a new opera by Wolfgang Rihm based on Nietzsche’s last cycle of poems, “Dionysus-Dithyrambs”.
Jonathan Meese lives and works in Berlin.
The gallery is open Tuesday to Friday, 10:30-20:00 / Saturday, 12:00-16:00.
11 EPTACHALKOU STREET ATHENS, GR-118 51
TEL: 210 3413936-7
