Zach Feuer Gallery is pleased to present “German Enlightenment,” the gallery’s second exhibition of work by German artist Anton Henning.

The exhibition includes paintings spanning from 2000 to 2008 and offering an insightful overview of Henning’s painterly preoccupations over the last years. The titles – all the works are entitled Interior, Portrait or Still life – announce rather traditional paint motifs. But Henning’s headstrong definition of these motifs challenges our way to categorize art by blurring the borders between the different genres: The flower still life Blumenstilleben No. 378 could just as well be an interior; Blumenstilleben Nr. 385 depicts a romantic landscape instead of flowers; the portraits are stylistically close to some of Henning’s interiors.

The chosen exhibition title “German Enlightenment” is a playful reference to both the artist’s cultural background and to a tangible element in this displayed body of work: the paintings are illuminated only from the light within the frames of the artist’s own design. The gallery space is transformed into a room-filling self-illuminated installation; the paintings stand out from the wall and capture the exhibition space.

Anton Henning has exhibited widely in museums and galleries internationally. He was recently the focus of solo exhibitions at Arp Museum, Remagen; Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag; S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; and MARTa Herford. Anton Henning’s work is represented in the permanent collections of numerous museums including Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg; Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma; Frieder Burda Museum, Baden Baden; Gemeentemuseum, Den Haag; Magasin 3, Stockholm; MOCA, Los Angeles; Natinal Museum of Art, Osaka; Neues Museum, Nürnberg; Valencia Art Contemporaneo, Valencia; Kunstmuseum, Luzern; Arp Museum, Rolandseck; Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main; Krefelder Kunstmuseen, Krefeld; De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg and Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City.