New sculptures byJonathan Meese are exhibited at Thaddaeus Ropac's Gallery in Salzburg until 17 January. Meese's esthetics of the exuberant characterizing his sculptures, pictures, and stage sceneries can hardly be assigned to one definite style or school. Meese creates his own universe far from the standards. It is populated by Caligula, Stalin, Scarlett Johansson, Marquis de Sade, Richard Wagner, Balthus, and Dr. No, to name just a few.
For this show, Meese mainly devoted himself to the classical fields of painting, drawing, and, in particular, sculpturing. Meese's position as an artist is defined by his striving for the autonomy of art and for general negation of self-reference. His concern is not about the artist's ego realizing itself in art but about the separation of both spheres from each other. The utopian project of a dictatorship of art - a goal often proclaimed in Meese's performances - is in the centre of Meese's work. As Meese puts it: "Art is completely indifferent about how Jonathan Meese feels."
General "HYBRISIS" (Bunter Lolly voll Abenteuer), 2007
To learn more: http://www.ropac.net/
