(Bortolami Gallery, Chelsea, Manhattan NY, November 4, 2011)
Review by Skully Gustafson
Finding out that Jonathan Meese was in New York City doing a free performance was a spectacular shock of magnificence. Meese is like a breath of fresh air because he allows himself to be totally free in his work and has the ability to convincingly transform anything into "art", a pure devotee to his self-proclaimed "Dictatorship of Art".
Meese claims that "art is total play" and he defiantly acts this out to the fullest by being an all-around-art kind of guy: performance, installation, painting, sculpting, pure nonsense expression, and he does it in a smart, humorous, political, and an often time childish way.
Jonathan Meese stood at the door of Bortolami Gallery in Chelsea welcoming people with excitedly happy and charming greetings.
The show took place in two rooms. In the first room, the stage displayed large black and red minimal sculptures. Paintings and photographs containing german-english mixed text also filled the space.
In the second room, grotesque and mythical paintings and sculptures adorned the space.
Next, Meese gave a humorous speech pacing the stage back and forth talking about the "Triumph of Art", incorporating Nazi-like techniques of propaganda, gestures, attitude and voice.
At the same time, Meese demanded that society surrender to the "Total Dictatorship of Art". He proclaimed that our democratic societies are being run by "idiotic assholes" and we all need to "shit out our ego" and not be the creators but the "Baby Soldiers of Art."
Some in the audience appeared timid, awkward, and disturbed by Meese's tone while others found a great amount of humor by the performance and laughed uncontrollably at times.
Overall Meese entertained for the duration of his performance, fitting into his "Self Portrait" repertoire and "The Revolution of Art" for everyone.
