MAY 12 – JUNE 18, 2017

»PARSIFAL’S TRAUM: CHEFSACHE ›K.U.N.S.T.‹« JONATHAN MEESE IN COOPERATION WITH WIENER FESTWOCHEN

»MONDPARSIFAL ALPHA 1-8 (ERZMUTTERZ DER ABWEHRZ)« is the title that Jonathan Meese gave to his outer-space production of an opera by Bernhard Lang, which will premiere at the 2017 Wiener Festwochen festival. As the title suggests, this is a reinterpretation of the subject matter of Richard Wagner’s last opera »Parsifal« (1882). Meese is a painter, sculptor, and action artist. His art overall appears like a commentary: sharp, at times (r)evolutionary, provocative, loud and chaotic, sometimes also affable. It reflects our present time with its erosion of traditional values in politics, religion and society. Meese’s (bossy) response to this is: K.U.N.S.T. (A.R.T.). In the Picture Gallery, he now lands a new group of works, flying in like a spaceship. Four places south of the Alps that were home to schools of painters become associative theatrical venues, in which Meese, like in »MONDPARSIFAL,« explores the significance of art for the future, interrogating the Old Masters. At the same time, he responds to them with his own pictures and a Janusface, »CHEF DER KUNST« (the boss of art). The sculpture

provides a focusing point for Parsifal, Meese, Wagner, and viewers alike. MEESE SHOWS IT WITHOUT GUILE. An exhibition project of Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna in cooperation with Wiener Festwochen and Galerie Krinzinger Vienna.

BIOGRAPHY JONATHAN MEESE

Born 1970 in Tokyo, lives and works in Berlin and Ahrensburg. Jonathan Meese’s visual artwork is informed by the tradition of the gesamtkunstwerk and comprises painting, sculpture, installation, performance, drawing, collage, and theater work. Already with his first participation in an exhibition at the 1st Berlin Biennale in 1998, his work met with broad recognition. In an exuberant installation, in which all sorts of materials, from photocopies and drawings and posters to carnival masks were scattered all over the place like in a messy children's playroom, he indiscriminately celebrated heroes and antiheroes of world history, mythology, movies, and popular culture. Even at this early stage, it became clear that Meese is a demiurge, a maker of worlds incessantly building and shaping and painting a grand design to establish the rule of art. The idea of an all-encompassing totality of art, a distinct performance aspect as well as the vision of art as a counterworld, of a “dictatorship of art” is what links Meese’s work to the theater in the first place. Early on, his extensive installations show a talent for theatrical staging. And so Meese was first invited by director Leander Haußmann to provide a set design for his 1998 movie “Sonnenallee.” In 2004, Bert Neumann and Frank Castorf asked him to come to work at the Berlin Volksbühne, where, in the following years, he created stage designs for Pitigrilli’s “Cocaine” and three other plays. There, Meese combined painting, sculpture, and installation in a unique manner; three genres which, while continuing to work on them separately until today, he has increasingly brought together into a “single vast formation, equally manuscript, stage, situation, and dressing room” (Roberto Ohrt). In it, Jonathan Meese realizes his dream of art without limits. A performative theatrical sculpture entitled “DE FRAU“ was the first piece Jonathan Meese directed for the stage, making actors

engage in free play, in which everyone could interfere without script or directions, and stirring a small revolution at this ensemble oriented house. More stage designs were created for Wolfgang Rihm’s opera “Dionysos”, which premiered at the 2010 Salzburg festival under the direction of Pierre Audi, and, again under Audi, for Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Baroque opera “Médée” at the Paris Théâtre des Champs Elysées in 2012. Jonathan Meese first came in contact with Richard Wagner’s “Parsifal” through an invitation from the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden. In parallel to the production of “Parsifal” in the main house, he gave a total of five performances on his own stage in the storage area of the opera building. Here, below the actual stage space, Meese played out his own version of the opera, with himself as stage designer and the only actor. After an invitation for him to direct at the Wagnerian temple in Bayreuth in 2016 was eventually withdrawn, the artist is currently working, on behalf of the Wiener Festwochen festival, on a new production of “Parsifal” for the big stage, in which he is for the first time simultaneously responsible for the stage direction as well as the stage and costume design.

PRESS PHOTOGRAPHS

These images may be used free of charge when writing about the exhibition; to download them please go to http://press.khm.at.

Jonathan Meese »DER CHEF DER KUNST (DIE VIER SÜSSESTEN ERZELEMENTE DE LARGE)« 2017 © Photography: JanBauer.net, courtesy JonathanMeese.com Courtesy Galerie Krinzinger, Wien

Jonathan Meese "DR. UNENDLICHKEIT (SEHNSUCHT DE LARGE) "SÜDEN"", 2017 acrylic on canvas 100.5 x 80.3 x 3.3 cm © Photography: JanBauer.net, courtesy JonathanMeese.com Courtesy Galerie Krinzinger, Wien

Jonathan Meese "DR. DREIECKUS (KAMPF DE LARGE) "WESTEN"", 2017 acrylic on canvas 100.5 x 80.3 x 3.3 cm © Photography: JanBauer.net, courtesy JonathanMeese.com Courtesy Galerie Krinzinger, Wien

Jonathan Meese "DR. QUADRATUS "LIEBE DE LARGE" (NORDEN)", 2017 acrylic on canvas 100 x 80.3 x 3 cm © Photography: JanBauer.net, courtesy JonathanMeese.com Courtesy Galerie Krinzinger, Wien

Jonathan Meese "DR. KREISUS (INSTINKT DE LARGE) "OSTEN"", 2017 acrylic, mixed media on canvas 100 x 80.3 x 3 cm © Photography: JanBauer.net, courtesy JonathanMeese.com Courtesy Galerie Krinzinger, Wien

Model of the sculpture "DER CHEF DER KUNST (DIE VIER SÜSSESTEN ERZELEMENTE DE LARGE)" 2017 © Photography: JanBauer.net, courtesy JonathanMeese.com Courtesy Galerie Krinzinger, Wien

Jonathan and Brigitte Meese 2017 © Photography: JanBauer.net, courtesy JonathanMeese.com

Jonathan Meese 2017 © Photography: JanBauer.net, courtesy JonathanMeese.com

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