PRESS RELEASE
Homage to David Lynch
Jonathan Meese and Herbert Volkmann extend their installation in Goslar

In the context of their exhibition “Flesh is Harder than Steel” at the Mönchehaus Museum, Goslar, in 2009, Jonathan Meese and Herbert Volkmann, artists and mutual friends, staged a joint installation in honour of the New York artist Dash Snow, who died while still in his 20s. The two artists now wish to extend this installation to mark the award of the 2010 Kaiserring to the painter and director David Lynch, whom they likewise hold in high regard. In Meese and Volkmann’s self-image and their work, alliances with other artists play an important role. They both attach importance to artistic collaboration, as is, after all, exemplified in their own mutual co-operation. What they like and admire about Dash Snow, whom the friends knew well personally, was the unswerving way in which he defended his artistic positions, not least the rigour with which he combined his work with his life, to the point of self-destruction. David Lynch, by contrast, is a hero whom they know and appreciate exclusively through his work. The two artists continue to be impressed by Lynch’s sensitive stock-taking of bourgeois pathologies, the radical way in which he plumbs the dark sides of human existence, and his journeys into the world of intoxication and excess, sex and violence.

Jonathan Meese and Herbert Volkmann will be working on their installation at the Mönchehaus Museum in Goslar from 4 to 6 October 2010 and will be present at David Lynch’s press conference.

The installation will be on show for the duration of the exhibition of works by David Lynch, i.e. from 9 October 2010 to 30 January 2011.

Michael Stoeber