Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by German artist Norbert Bisky. Bisky paints idyllic images and utopian scenes of (mostly male) youth engaged in athletic games, tests of skill or endurance against a background of optimistic colors that mimic sunshine- dappled open skies. Bodies are taut, ever moving forward, on occasion even floating, oddly powerful and ethereal at the same time. A congruence of cultural antecedents appear as one is instantly reminded of imagery co-opted by National Socialist propaganda and later Social Realism. Even more recently, fragments of these same ideas have crept into Madison Avenue's vocabulary of images. In Bisky's paintings, this imagery, on the surface, carefree and idyllic suddenly presents itself with looming implications, complex and shadowy underpinnings. Their titles, sometimes borrowed from Communist slogans, sometimes acquisitioned from themes from the Love Parade, further complicate the issue, turning the relentless optimism abruptly oppressive and claustrophobic.

Bisky's intent is constantly being called into question. Born in East Germany, the son of a prominent Socialist politician, Lothar, Norbert Bisky's childhood was spent under the Socialist regime of the GDR. The imprint of the years spent as a pioneer youth, singing socialist songs, remains churning in his memory. According to Bisky, the imagery of his childhood had mutated from one dictatorship to another. Bisky sees this singularity of vision as a precursor to those incorporated by current ad campaigns that lull a stupefied public into believing that a life is directly measured simply by what a person is able to buy. The consequences visited upon a society that increasingly refers to its citizenry only as "consumers", is obfuscated by color and high gloss. It is the ability of this specific type of imagery to mutate and come to conform equally to one ideology or another that is of interest.

For his show at Leo Koenig Inc., Bisky has chosen the title that is similar to a slogan for the U.S. Marines. When suddenly taken out of context, slogans such as "Be all that you can Be" and "an Army of One" rings all too ominously familiar. The evincing of universal themes such pride, self-betterment, teamwork, comraderie etc. is incorporated and distorted again and again by disparate organizations for the simple reason that it is effective. The sunlight insinuated by Bisky's paintings represents the same optimism that shines from those who smile but would rather us not question what is behind it. But Bisky in fact, demands that the viewer does question everything that is seen. His canvases are beautifully painted, radiantly colored, blatant confrontations with an intoxicating malevolence. Looking at Bisky's work is the inverse of finding a silver lining.

Norbert Bisky was born in Leipzig, Germany. He graduated from the Hochschule de Kunst in Berlin where he was a master student of George Baselitz. He also studied with Jim Dine at the Salzburg Summer Academy. Bisky's work has been included in numerous museum exhibitions such as most recently, the Kunstmuseum Ostende in Belguim as well as the Neues Museum Weserberg in Bremen, Museum Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin and the Frissiras Museum in Athens, Greece. This is Norbert Bisky's first solo exhibition in New York City.

For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.