The oeuvre of Anton Henning is characterised by an unremitting engagement with a heterogeneity of art historic styles, genres and media. Ranging from painting, sculpture, video and installation, his works are laden with visual allusions and art historical quotes, that reveal the artist’s playful use of irony and his sense for irritating the educated beholder. With ease he appropriates the vocabulary of modernism, arbitrarily mixing geometrical and gestural abstractions with figurative motives. And yet, his convergence of style and subject matter is not confined to the two-dimensional pictorial space. Recurrently, he transposes his sujets into three-dimensional space, introducing yet another level of references. These installations, often referred to as “Salons” – often accompanied by self-designed furniture by the artist, not only allude to traditions of institutional critique during the 70ies, but also figure as reinterpretations of the Salon – the epitome of the bourgeois’ cultural sphere of the late 19th century.
Read MoreAnton Henning has gained an international reputation through numerous solo exhibitions in European, Asian and American institutions and galleries. Only recently, two Berlin institutions – the Georg-Kolbe Museum and the Haus am Waldsee – dedicated parallel solo exhibitions to the artist (2009). Further exhibition locations include the Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen (2009), Kunsthalle Mannheim (2009), Arp Museum, Remagen (2008), S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent (2007), MARTa Herford (2005), Haus Esters, Krefeld (2005), Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main (2005), Museum of Art Lucerne (2003), and the De Pont – museum of contemporary art, Tilburg (2002). Recent group exhibitions include „Neue Heimat,“ Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2007), „Neue Malerei. Erwerbungen 2002–2005,” Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden (2006), and “Size Matters: XXL – Recent Large-Scale Paintings,” Center for Contemporary Art, New York (2008).
