Anton Henning

When Anton Henning entered the stage of international art at the end of the 1990s, he surprised with his very first installation at the Kasseler Kunstverein throuogh his wide range of capabilities of interpreting models and projecting them into his own biography. Like Picabia he stands by his bourgeois background, is full of energy, highly intelligent very cultivated and provocative. He acts more quickly than others and allows neither technique nor genre to narrow his horizon: he is a painter and sculptor, designer, video artist and musician; he is his own curator and museum director. He follows his own ideals and does not submit to any ideology.

He devours the artworks of the centuries by a practice which expresses respect, levity and irony in equal measure. Henning is a loner who, like Picabia and Picasso before him, claims the right to artistic freedom, regardless. In the arts, the balancing act between copy and free interpretation is like walking a tight-rope across the abyss of mere entertainment. Henning undertakes the feat confident in his excellent painting skills and his sense of humor. He is fully aware of risking misunderstanding when he indulges in his obsession of an artistic communication that is of the greatest possible freedom. He gladly runs the risk since he is secure in the knowledge of being on what, for him, is definitely the right side.