Drips of paint move out of the hats and over the picture ground, giving it a rising dynamic. With complex and often subliminal allusions and an unusually innocent approach when taking a stance about art discourses, Florian Meisenberg questions and twists traditional, standardized ideas of the institutional art system and creates a dense presentation that, with an essay campaigning for art as an authentic dynamic manifesto, responds to traditional reference systems. This is made clearest by the creation of a pictorial cosmos of delicately drawn fi gures with recurring unduly long noses, spelling out phrases such as “Oh lord” or functioning as musical instruments. The route through this pictorial installation leads to the heart of the show, a large-format picture from the “democracy needs monogamy” series: here all kind of insects with large, empty eyes romp around in magnifi cently colored robes. This lively swarm is concentrated parallel to a black horizon on the lower edge of the picture, suggesting that this density symbolizes changes of direction in art.

(Translated from German by Michael Robinson)