Bortolami Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of new drawings, paintings and sculptures by German artist Jonathan Meese. In the four years since his last solo New York Show, Meese has discovered that his entire career has been spent in service of the Dictatorship of Art. Meese now provides us with the only option to the failed destructive religion of democracy, the Dictatorship of Art. In this Dictatorship, human power and its limitations have been replaced by the unlimited benevolence and indifference of Art. To Meese “Art is not a religion, but every Religion is Art.”

As a Public Relations officer for the Dictatorship, Meese has been able to act as a neutral and hermetic explicator of our new heroes and villains. In the anti-reality of the Dictatorship, Mary Poppins (Dictatorbaby) can frolic with Meese’s hero from Clockwork Orange, Alex DeLarge (Revolutionbaby) and Wagner and Hitler can play with Scarlett Johansson (Scarlettierbaby) and Charles Bronson. Every painting in his new series is painted on black canvas. By painting on black, Meese’s palette is limited and he must paint in order to increase and expand Light rather than Dark. Each sculpture in the show demonstrates the unlimited relationships possible within the legal vacuum created by the Dictatorship. In its purest form Art is the total revolution of the future.

Jonathan Meese was born in 1970 in Tokyo and lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg. He began his career as a painter and then extended his practice and mainly dedicated himself to installation and performance. The trancelike state which he obtains during his performances has allowed him to explore new realms and realities. In the last two years Meese has had solo shows at La Caixa, Barcelona, Kunstraum Innsbruck, The Essl Museum in Vienna, De Appel Centre for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam and Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. In addition, he has shown at the Louisiana Museum, MAGASIN Center in Grenoble and Deichtorhallen, Hamburg. He performed in Wagner’s Parsifal in Berlin.