Artist: Henning Strassburger
Exhibition title: Die Unschuldigen (The Innocents)
Venue: Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany
Date: June 25 – July 25, 2020
Photography: Matthias Kolb / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
Contemporary Fine Arts is proud to announce „Die Unschuldigen“ (The Innocents), Henning Strassburger’s first exhibition with the gallery.
Henning Strassburger brings the anxieties and hopes of his generation into the heart of his painting with a fatal equanimity. “People no longer see innocently, so as a painter I cannot do that either”. The world we live in is vague and sketchy. Identification happens on surfaces. We constantly take on changing roles in changing constellations and contexts. To believe that any image remains innocent is an illusion.
In his new works, Strassburger has reached way back into the 20th century. Back to early Pop Art and to Jasper Johns whose gray pictures with their ciphers, numbers and letters came when the contradictory codes and symbols of our contemporary world were only just emerging. For his own grey paintings, Strassburger has used leftover paints to mix together “the most co-lorful gray you can imagine”. A gray that does not lack color, instead uniting all tones and moods in one.
Abstract and figure, writing and gesture, form and surface, texture and materiality melt to-gether in the simultaneity of the open frame. Asymmetrical sections draw us in very close. The existing reality material is disparate. Strassburger integrates it as part of a specific present moment. Everything is recorded, linked together and continued: existential fear, the culture of fun, the low-risk satisfaction of lust. As a virtual thing, such a painting is no longer merely the modernistic “picture within a picture”.
Enhanced many times over, Henning Strassburger transforms his ‘new painting’ into a painting of paintings. A painting in which everything might be as uncertain as the present from which it continuously feeds. A painting in which everything is wrong and everything is guilty. A painting in which, at the same time and perhaps precisely because of that, everything is also as true and as innocent as it can be.
Text by Christian Malycha
Henning Strassburger, Die Unschuldigen (The Innocents), 2020, exhibition view, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Die Unschuldigen (The Innocents), 2020, exhibition view, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Die Unschuldigen (The Innocents), 2020, exhibition view, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Die Unschuldigen (The Innocents), 2020, exhibition view, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Die Unschuldigen (The Innocents), 2020, exhibition view, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Superflex-Gum, 2020, oil and charcoal on canvas, 200 x 170 cm, 783/4 x 67 in, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Ol’ Plastic Sky, 2020, oil, charcoal and lacquer on canvas, 200 x 175 cm, 783/4 x 69 in, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Alphakevin, 2020, oil, charcoal and lacquer on canvas, 250 x 200 cm, 981/2 x 783/4 in, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Kartelltrickster, 2020, oil, charcoal and lacquer on canvas, 250 x 200 cm, 981/2 x 783/4 in, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Eau de Bro, 2020, oil, charcoal and lacquer on canvas, 250 x 200 cm, 981/2 x 783/4 in, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Hypernormalität, 2020, oil, charcoal and lacquer on canvas, 250 x 200 cm, 981/2 x 783/4 in, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Hedonistisches Abdriften, 2020, oil, charcoal and lacquer on canvas, 250 x 200 cm, 981/2 x 783/4 in, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Hedonistisches Abdriften, 2020, oil, charcoal and lacquer on canvas, 250 x 200 cm, 981/2 x 783/4 in, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Hedonistisches Abdriften, 2020, oil, charcoal and lacquer on canvas, 250 x 200 cm, 981/2 x 783/4 in, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Plastic Boy Toy, 2020, oil, charcoal and lacquer on canvas, 250 x 200 cm, 981/2 x 783/4 in, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, P.O.V., 2020, oil, charcoal and lacquer on canvas, 250 x 200 cm, 981/2 x 783/4 in, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
Henning Strassburger, Cabin Fever, 2020, oil, charcoal and lacquer on canvas, 250 x 200 cm, 981/2 x 783/4 in, Courtesy Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Photo: Matthias Kolb
