HENNING STRASSBURGER

Strassburger’s practice responds to the conditions of the contemporary visual world, where printed media, online imagery, and painting coexist within the same visual continuum. For the artist, painting is no longer separate from the circulation of digital and commercial images, and this directly informs both the aesthetics and production of his work.

His paintings draw inspiration from advertising color schemes and commercial imagery, reflecting on painting’s displacement as a dominant force within visual culture throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

Strassburger’s works take the form of large-scale abstractions. However, unlike his historical predecessors, the loops, swirls, and grids on the canvas are not intended as records of subjective gesture or personal mark-making. For the artist, artistic innovation in its traditional sense is no longer possible. Instead, his method is driven by a deliberate attempt to create uncertainty around the process itself.

Although the paintings initially resemble gestural Abstract Expressionism, their surfaces resist any clear reading of manual authorship. Strassburger never directly touches the canvas with a brush. The works remain flat, often dominated by white primer, emphasizing surface and reproduction rather than expression and depth.

His interest in flatness also references the legacy of Abstract Expressionism, while simultaneously distancing itself from its emphasis on individuality and authenticity. By avoiding the personal mark in favor of an impersonal surface, Strassburger connects painting to the reproduction and appropriation strategies associated with New Materialist practices.

For the artist, the challenge of contemporary painting lies in producing a work that resembles a print rather than a traditional painting. The result is a painting that questions its own identity as a painting.

CV

Henning Strassburger lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Akademie der Künste in Düsseldorf. His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including at Kunstraum Potsdam (2022), Kunsthal Rotterdam (2020), and Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

Courtesy Osnova gallery