(born 1969 in Berlin)
‘Zyklus-Potsdam’, 3 parts, on the reverse each titled, signed, dated Jonas Burgert 2006, inscribed Jonas Burgert, and numbered 9-10 and 11, oil on canvas, 205 x 145 cm (middle) and 2 parts each 195 x 90 cm (left and right), on stretcher, (PS)

Provenance:
Collection Sander, Berlin/Darmstadt

Literature:
Daniel J Schreiber, Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Jonas Burgert, Lebendversuch, exhibition catalogue Kunsthalle Tübingen, Kunsthalle Krems, Cologne 2011, CR no. 41 (b), p. 97

“Jonas Burgert’s visual imagery is filled with magic attraction, ranging from the grotesque to the fantastical and becoming the mirror of tension-ridden interpersonal relationships”... When asked about the political relevance of his works, Burgert answered thus: “I believe that painting must endeavour to capture something timeless... Generally speaking, I find it dangerous to bring politics into art. Whenever I deal with fundamental subjects in my paintings, there is everything in them, our definition as human beings and our spirituality – these primeval themes are also part of our present.” (Karin Pernegger, in: exhibition catalogue Tübingen/Krems, p. 53f)

“Although the viewer immerses himself in an eventful scene when reading the images, no actual narrative is performed before him. Rather, he encounters a number of narrative sequences that suggest the idea of an existential state which is evoked by means of a mythical sphere. Burgert’s reservoir of motifs contains references that reach deep into the existential dimension of being, the – at times archaic – cultural history of seemingly associated fragments derived from classical mythology, the Old Testament, as well as past and post-modern apocalyptic imagination. Moreover, Burgert’s paintings are capable of magically expressing man’s representation of the self as a demon, spirit or (fallen) angel.
His usually large-format compositions devote themselves to nothing less than the drama of life, of the history of mankind and the world. Burgert’s painterly reconnaissances are in the tradition of the centuries-old motif of the theatrum mundi (lit. ‘world stage’), in which the world is a stage, life a theatre piece, and man an actor.” (Hans-Peter Wipplinger, in: exhibition catalogue Tübingen/Krems, p. 75)

Contradictions are a stylistic principle of Jonas Burgert’s paintings. The viewer dives into a surreal fantasy world, in which dream and reality, thoughts and visions, destruction and vitality, activity and passivity, the overwhelmingly large and the infinitesimally small meet and are merged, as it were, into a very special, unmistakable pictorial language.