Jonathan Meese

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Jonathan Meese (born January 23, 1970), Tokyo) is a painter, sculptor and performance artist based in Berlin and Hamburg.

Meese attended Hochschule der Bildenden Künste [1] in Berlin from 1995-1998.

He has been included in many exhibitions such as “Spezialbilder” at Contemporary Fine Arts [2] in Berlin, “Grotesk!” at Schirn Kunsthalle [3] in Frankfurt and “Schnitt bringt Schnitte” at Ausstellungsraum Schnitt [4] in Köln. Recent exhibitions include Thanks, Wally Whyton (Revendaddy Phantomilky on Coconut Islandaddy) at Modern Art in London, and the controversial performance at Tate Modern, entitled NOEL COWARD IS BACK- Dr. Humpty Dumpty vs. Fra No-Finger[5]. He has exhibited internationally at galleries including Modern Art [6], London, Galerie Daniel Templon [7], Paris and Centro Cultural Andratx [8], Mallorca. He is represented by Contemporary Fine Arts [9] in Berlin, Leo Koenig [10] in New York and Modern Art [11] in London.

Jonathan Meese is a self-proclaimed cultural exorcist. In his performances, sculptures and paintings he adopts a shamanistic role, channelling all manner of chaotic zeitgeist. His personal interests reverberate throughout his paintings: comic books, horror films, medieval crusades and outsider art merge into a compendium of morality and epic failure. In his paintings, clear-cut roles of good vs. evil are confused, ironic propaganda is served up with homebrew conviction and malevolent knaves become heroes of the disenfranchised.

Appropriating historical and media references, Meese parodies his own symbolism. His paintings adopt the theatrical quality of opera, with pretend realms of decadence and absurdity, where form and idea become easily detached and reassembled according to the artist’s own logic. Meese’s grand claims become zombie-like effigies, redundant sequels to real historical epics. Finding catharsis in replicating ritual, Meese renders its powerful aura defunct in the process.

In his self-portraits, Meese exaggerates his real-life ‘wild-man’ features, his image continuously mutating through a cast of characters – from demons to divas – to develop potential narratives exploring the nature of power and conspiracy underlying contemporary mythology. Through his many reinventions, Meese replicates celebrity image manufacturing to style himself as a cult figure: both symptom and cure of a corrupted belief system. Collectively Meese’s works operate as meta-narratives; feeding the fictional legacy of the artist as an almighty and immortal entity.

Meese furnishes his work with an amateur aesthetic; his expressionism is staged as adolescent malice, embracing the values of individualism and anarchical force. Grotesque, sublime and comically dumb, his paintings follow the principles of science fiction prophecy. They envision the future as a post-Armageddon landscape, where primitivism is embraced as the rational and finite social solution.