Now Representing – Norbert Bisky
Esther Schipper is delighted to announce the representation of Norbert Bisky.
Bright and seductive, Bisky’s paintings have an emotional depth, stemming from the lingering echo of the artist’s early sources. Born into a family loyal to the regime in what was then communist East Germany, Bisky's biography is an important factor to understand his iconography. His figures, mostly young men, initially drew on the imagery of totalitarian regimes and capitalist propaganda, which generally portrayed the male body in ideologically charged ways: as a conventionally beautiful, athletic, and healthy body, as a soldier, worker, or consumer object. In Bisky's paintings the glistening bodies are both attractive and joyful, yet their depictions are on second view also fragmentary, their bodies disjointed in the light. Often located in a precarious space—falling, suspended in mid-air or hanging upside down—their untetheredness is a formal expression of an existential state. To Bisky the dissolution of East Germany represented simultaneously loss and gain—as an entire system vanished, a point of familiar orientation fell away but so did its restraining and disciplining bondage, giving him the freedom to choose his way of life and to become an artist.
Bisky’s vivid imagery has also featured in the context of performing arts. In 2013, he created the stage design for the Staatsballett Berlin's performance of Masse, which took place in the Halle am Berghain. His work Vertigo has been permanently installed in the entrance area since May 2017. For the Stuttgart State Opera in cooperation with the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival, he directed and created the stage design for the play Die Schöne Müllerin in 2024. His series of works Colaba is part of the new collection presentation at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, This is Tomorrow.
The artist will have his first solo exhibition, entitled Polympsest, with the gallery in June 2025 at Esther Schipper, Berlin.
Norbert Bisky was born 1970 in Leipzig, Germany. He studied painting at the Berlin University of the Arts in the class of Georg Baselitz. Furthermore, Bisky spent an academic year during his studies at the faculty of fine arts of the Universidad Complutense in Madrid and he joined the class of Jim Dine in the Salzburg Summer Academy. He lives and works in Berlin and Andalusia.
From 2008 to 2010, Bisky was a visiting professor at the Geneva Academy of Fine Arts HEAD and from 2016 to 2018 at the Braunschweig University of Art.
Norbert Bisky’s works have been shown in numerous international solo exhibitions, including: Walküren, Museum der Stadt Worms im Andreasstift, Worms (2024); Im Freien, Kunstverein Freunde Aktueller Kunst, Zwickau (2023); Mirror Society, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia (2022); DISINFOTAINMENT, G2 Kunsthalle, Leipzig (2021); Berlin Sunday, Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers (2020); Pompa, St. Matthäus-Kirche, Berlin (2019); Rant, Villa Schöningen, Potsdam (2019); Balagan, Bötzow, Berlin (2015); Zentrifuge, Kunsthalle Rostock, Rostock (2014); Special Report, Kunsthalle Memmingen (2013); A Retrospective of Ten Years of Painting, Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp, Cully (2011); Norbert Bisky: Paintings, Haifa Museum of Art (2009); Mandelkern, Dortmunder Kunstverein, Dortmund (2009); ich war’s nicht, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2007); Total Care, CAC – Centre for Contemporary Art, Vilnius (2006); Malerei, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2005); Leider defekt, Kunstverein Gütersloh, Gütersloh (2005); Abgesagt, Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim (2004); Essig und Blut, Brandenburger Kunstverein Potsdam e.V. with Cornelia Schleime, Potsdam (2002); einer muß das sagen haben, Museum Junge Kunst, Frankfurt Oder (2002); Zeig uns den Weg, Centro Cultural São Lourenço, São Lourenço (2001) and Vorkämpfer, Chelsea Kunstraum, Cologne (2001).
