Jonathan Meese Japanese, 1970

Jonathan Meese (Tokyo, Japan 1970)

From 1995 to 1998, Meese attended the art academy in Hamburg, where he studied under Franz Erhard Walther. He leaves the academy without graduating and attracts attention in the same year with his controversial installation at the first Berlin Biennale.

His very diverse work includes paintings, sculptures, installations, performances and theatre works. In his works, he thematises German mythology and the "German delusion", often in an aggressive and offensive manner. He also deals with personalities from world history, myths, heroic legends and National Socialism.

In his work "De Keim" from 2007, a collage, he places symbols of war, here in the form of an order of war, in direct connection with symbols of peace, such as the symbol of the feather. You can also recognise a geisha turning her back to the viewer, next to which is a scrap of text on which the words "Revelations and Secrets" are written, thus aptly summarising Meese's work.

Meese has worked with the painters Jörg Immendorff, Albert Oehlen and Daniel Richter, among others.

In 2006, Hamburg's Deichtorhallen organised his first major exhibition. Important international museums and public collections such as the Städel in Frankfurt, the Statens museum for kunst in Copenhagen, the Centre Pompidou - Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris and the Saatchi Gallery in London present his works.

Copyright the artist. Photo UniCredit Group