Norbert Bisky Ausbruch, 2025

Bisky has established a formal vocabulary in which bodies become representations of existential states. 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.

The painting's title Ausbruch (EN Outburst) refers to an event outside the picture, as the male figures’ gazes are directed at something beyond the edge of the picture. The figures hint at the next step, remaining in a pose, fighting or running. Yellow, blue, and white traces of color refer to flying sparks, “fallout,” or an approaching storm. Characteristically, the scene is ambiguous: Despite the bright, summery glaze colors, the faces appear serious and focused. Something has happened or is about to happen. The setting cannot be assigned to any specific situation and thus conveys both uncertainty and freedom.

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. With their deliberate play on an unfinished and fragmentary quality, the paintings evoke the history or ruin as elegiac motif in 18th and especially 19th century painting and architecture where they functioned as symbolic representation of the fleetingness of life and, more broadly, of civilizations.

Championing plurality over purity, the formal incorporation of a wide array of influences is understood as a political gesture at a time when personal, sexual, cultural, and political freedoms taken for granted—in the West, in Germany and Berlin—are under threat