Norbert Bisky Prequel, 2025
Oil on canvas
170 x 250 cm
Norbert Bisky’s figures—painted in bright and seductive colors yet fragmented, falling, untethered—have always been a symbol of the precarious nature of man in totalitarian societies and under capitalism. The paintings are of the here and now: they picture landmarks of Berlin life, some of which are threatened by gentrification or urban decay. They are a wakeup call by articulating a wider sociopolitical mood and the consequences of the state of polycrisis on psyche, society, or city—as exemplified by Berlin where the artist has lived since 1981.
The state of the city, and society at large, is represented by heady mix of quotations from urban life. The streets are alive in these paintings but also in a feverish dream of change, upheaval and decay. At the center of the composition is a figure wearing a mask. The so-called Guy Fawkes mask has been used by protest groups for the last decade or so since the Occupy movement popularized it.
A recurring motif of these works are tromp l’oeil-like depictions of torn posters with parts of words or single letters of text remaining. The reference to the aesthetic of the French post-World War II artists known as "affichistes" (from French affiche meaning poster) is not only formal but conceptual, pointing to the larger context of that moment in the late 1950s and 1960s. The affichistes drew on Abstract expressionist aesthetics but grew out of the radical politics of reappropriation (detournement) and urban wanderings (dérive) of the Situationist International. Comics, signs, and fragments of street art also feature in Bisky’s paintings, reiterating the hybridity of the urban environment, a living canvas of signs in constant flux.
Formally drawing on painting’s history and its contemporary discourse, Bisky’s works combine figurative and abstract elements. His figures are surrounded by painterly sections of thin translucent glazes applied in broad loose strokes. At times, they appear to delve into a sea of color or are partially obscured by sweeping patches. Some sections appear at first like raw canvas. A major theme of the current body work, then, is ruin. With their deliberate play on an unfinished and fragmentary quality, the paintings evoke its history as elegiac motif in 18th and especially 19th century painting and architecture where ruins functioned as symbolic representation of the fleetingness of life and, more broadly, of civilizations.
The state of the city, and society at large, is represented by heady mix of quotations from urban life. The streets are alive in these paintings but also in a feverish dream of change, upheaval and decay. At the center of the composition is a figure wearing a mask. The so-called Guy Fawkes mask has been used by protest groups for the last decade or so since the Occupy movement popularized it.
A recurring motif of these works are tromp l’oeil-like depictions of torn posters with parts of words or single letters of text remaining. The reference to the aesthetic of the French post-World War II artists known as "affichistes" (from French affiche meaning poster) is not only formal but conceptual, pointing to the larger context of that moment in the late 1950s and 1960s. The affichistes drew on Abstract expressionist aesthetics but grew out of the radical politics of reappropriation (detournement) and urban wanderings (dérive) of the Situationist International. Comics, signs, and fragments of street art also feature in Bisky’s paintings, reiterating the hybridity of the urban environment, a living canvas of signs in constant flux.
Formally drawing on painting’s history and its contemporary discourse, Bisky’s works combine figurative and abstract elements. His figures are surrounded by painterly sections of thin translucent glazes applied in broad loose strokes. At times, they appear to delve into a sea of color or are partially obscured by sweeping patches. Some sections appear at first like raw canvas. A major theme of the current body work, then, is ruin. With their deliberate play on an unfinished and fragmentary quality, the paintings evoke its history as elegiac motif in 18th and especially 19th century painting and architecture where ruins functioned as symbolic representation of the fleetingness of life and, more broadly, of civilizations.