Henning Strassburger: Die Unschuldigen Exhibition Catalogue CFA Contemporary Fine Arts Berlin

In the age of social media, Henning Strassburger, who studied at Kunstakademie Dusseldorf from 2006 to 2009, explores new perspectives, new approaches regarding habitus, and new formal language rules. In addition to the strong charisma that pop culture quite obviously exudes on his work, one is immediately reminded of the dictum of Jasper Johns (1965) in that illusionist painting no longer needs any pictorial illusionism because it has now become an object itself; after all, the ­illusionary representation of an object, an actual object, had become obsolete with Pop Art. This is still valid today, albeit under different circumstances, which is why the exhibition organizer Max Dax is presenting the works of Henning Strassburger in the Hamburg exhibition HYPER, also under the aspect that the flood of images on the Internet simulating realism provides an inexhaustible fund of object-like works in the sense of Johns. Accordingly, Henning Strassburger uses the teenage fantasies embodied by net idols as projection surfaces for abstract image motifs: the kiss of two female pop stars on the big stage just as much as the self-invention of a teen star as a tough macho-rapper.

Christian Malycha, born 1978, is a German art historian who was artistic director of the Kunstverein Reutlingen from 2013 to 2018. Nicole Hackert and Bruno Brunnet (the founder of the gallery in 1992) are a permanent part of the international gallery world with CFA situated now at Grolmanstraße in Berlin/Charlottenburg. Their work is inherent part with the beginning of artistic careers of Cecily Brown, Peter Doig, Sarah Lucas, Jonathan Meese, Raymond Pettibon, TAL R, Daniel Richter, Christian Rosa, Dana Schutz, Norbert Schwontkowski, Katja Strunz, Juergen Teller, or Marianne Vitale, just to name a few.