Lot Essay
Jonathan Meese is one of German art's rising stars, who through his radical way of working, ambitious themes and heavy symbolism has caused quite a stir since he graduated from the Hamburg-based Hochschule fr Bildende Knsten in 1998. His oeuvre, consisting of performances, paintings, sculptures, objects, drawings and installations, presents an excentric universe filled with personal obsessions and bizarre fantasies: art with a grand gesture that depicts visions and appeals to universal sentiments. With his eclectic mix of mythology, history and pop culture, Meese alludes to major upheavals in Western history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He does not shy from pathos or bombast and refers repeatedly to his personal (notorious) 'heroes' that range from dictators and Hollywood stars to philosophers and musicians. His work is represented in the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Muses de Strassbourg, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Arario Gallery, Seoul, Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg, Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg, Sammlung Goetz, Munich and Saatchi, London. Major shows were at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg and the MAGASIN Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Grenoble (2006), the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (2006), The Saatchi Gallery, London (2005). In 2007 de Appel presented his solo Jonathan Meese "Jonathan Rockford (Don't call me back, please)".