Jonathan Meese
AMAZONENGOLD de LARGE

Copyright the artist; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf

The cosmos was created by an artistic consideration, not a religious or political one. The cosmos was created through the pressure of art, through a volcanic eruption or through an eruption of matter. A volcano does not erupt because we are evil or something, but because the pressure is so high (…) that it has to break free, and the Big Bang is exactly the same. It is a balance of pressure ratio. It had to happen. And it didn't happen religiously or politically, but because it had to happen. like love, which is not political and not religious, but is simply infallible power.

Jonathan Meese


A Podcast by Jonathan Meese about the exhibition and an accompanying slideshow below.

Copyright the artist; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf; Photo Simon Vogel, Cologne
Copyright the artist; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf; Photo Simon Vogel, Cologne
Copyright the artist; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf; Photo Simon Vogel, Cologne
Copyright the artist; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf; Photo Simon Vogel, Cologne
Copyright the artist; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf; Photo Simon Vogel, Cologne

I often work starting with a blotch of color and the blotch then tells me a story. In this blotch everything is already determined. And I just have to be attentive enough to recognize what it wants: will it want to expand? Get an eye? How does it work?

Jonathan Meese

REIFEZEUGNIS
(KUNSTFÜHRUNG: KUNST ZEUGT DICH! (KUNST SÄUGT ZUKUNFT), 2021)

"HUMPTY-DUMPTYRN":
DER MEESESAMURAI EHRENKODEXT NUR KUNST! (EGG) Meese, 2021


(english audio transcript)

In front of the painting Maturity Certificate you see a table sculpture, two tables on top of each other and on top of it a kind of super samurai, which consists of a grid system. And it's always about how to fill a sculpture, how to fill a mask. And this samurai is filled with art, he's always ready to fight for the future. Below him is the head of the Metropolis character from the Fritz Lang film. This is also a figure that awaits the future excitedly.

At the very back of the table is "Mull off Kintyre," one of Paul McCartney's best songs. It reminds of a pyramid. You can see the word "Judas", which always refers to the song "You" by Boytronic, a great music group from Hamburg. You can see through this sculpture. For me, it's always about the spaces in between. They are crucial because they describe the space of art. The space of art must be absolutely free of censorship, politics and religion. Because the space of art is pure future, a play space. This sculpture is a pyramid of the future without religious meaning.

WE DON'T NEED THE BAD GUYS OF REALITY, BUT WE DO NEED THE BAD GUYS IN ART

Jonathan Meese

Detail

DR. FORT KNOX MIT DEN DREI GOLDENEN HAAROFFIZIEREN DE LARGE!


BIST ESEL ODER MEESEL!?! (ODER DE ZWEI !)


MEINE PRAXIS IST ZU SEHR KUNST FÜR DICH!


DER TEUFEL MIT DER GOLDENEN NASE! (BLUTONILL)


2021


(english audio transcript)

Now you can see the "Amazon Gold Bank". This bank is a reference and a declaration of love to the most total bank, the gold bank, Fort Knox. So also a declaration of love to Goldfinger and the three gold heads are the triumvirate. In this bank is the treasure of art, that is the total free space art.

The three masks behind the bench belong to the three figures on the bench, which can put on the masks as in a masquerade, as and when they want. It shows: You can slip into any role. Any costume is allowed. In art you can't censor yourself, you can take on any identity. Art is the freest play of all forces and we have to fill the masks and the roles again and allow ourselves everything.
This is the toy of art, the pure objectification. We see all objects very airily suspended like in an art state ballet. And in the same time it looks like an archaeological tomb, and although everything can be seen separately the objects are connected to form a total work of art.

DER HYPERRAUM /
The Hyper Space



(english audio transcript)

Now we come to an archaeological hyperspace with a city backdrop. You are in an excavation site, which could be Pompeii shortly after a volcanic eruption.


Art is always the balancing of constraints. Art is terror, which is fruitful because art wants to replace reality with the future. Reality is often a stumbling block to get to the future. We must not be too fanatical about reality, these figures we see do not come from reality, but from the counterworld, from art.


They are messengers of art, and they tell us that reality is worn out and that we must replace it with art, we must replace politics and religion with art. (...) These figures come from the galaxy, they come from the cosmos, they hit the earth at some point like meteorites and then were dug up and are now presented. These figures have survived the volcanic eruption and the paintings, it's like cave painting. We are in a grotto of art, you see crazy animal paintings and you see "terror-horror" and horror in art is great, terror and horror in reality sucks. And art doesn't produce real victims, only reality does that. And we shouldn't be so fanatical about reality anymore, we should trust art again, because it has always taken us further.

This is a triptych with a kind of octopus in the middle or a super fish, an octopus with eight arms. The eight represents the sign of infinity. The 8, in a way, outlaws reality and politics and religion through art. You show the red card to religion and politics, by banning it, by prohibiting it. We don't need more reality, we need more art, and art is the force that moves us forward. If you don't want art, you don't want the future, and that's why we must never censor art. It must have free rein. Art is the freest play of all forces, isn't it? In these sculptures we see the playing child in us. Like the child, nothing is sacred to art, it is not a god. Art is the state of tomorrow and you can see that in these sculptures. These sculptures are more permanent than any form of politics.

These sculptures are representatives, no, are presentations of the dictatorship of art, we no longer need representatives, we need presentations. We see here, for example, a flying devil. We simply see things that have no place at all in reality, only in art. And these horror figures dispel the problem of reality. We have to be relieved of art so that we can bear reality at all. The biggest enemy of art is reality fanaticism, and the idea that politics or religion should govern us, that's a chimera.

We should be guided by what is the coolest and that is art, that means we need the Gesamtkunstwerk, Ludwig II of Bavaria already said that, Richard Wagner already said that, we just didn't take it seriously. We have to work on that. We can achieve everything through art and we have to recognize the overpotential of art again, we have to overexert ourselves, we have to do a lot, then we will get to the Gesamtkunstwerk and that is the goal.

Glazed ceramic
41 x 20 x 30 cm
Copyright the artist; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf; Photo Roman März
Glazed ceramic
30,5 x 25,5 x 24,5 cm
Copyright the artist; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf; Photo Roman März
Glazed ceramic
37 x 21,5 x 18 cm
Copyright the artist; Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf; Photo Roman März

These are not priestly masks, these masks are toys. These masks are not ideological masks to embody power, these are play. They are children's masks at the end of the day, because we have to remain children to be able to serve art. If we are not children at heart, we cannot enter the future.

Jonathan Meese