Fine Arts Lecture Series – Maximilian Kirmse
Die Brillenschlange – On the Path to Painting
[…] It is precisely this rather laid-back Berlin way of life that Maximilian Kirmse’s visual worlds capture, without resorting to grand drama or having to invent absurd motifs. Far removed from the tourist’s fantasies of the big city—dreams of the old glamorous West, of sleepwalking party-goers in Mitte, or of cool hipsters in the gentrified urban landscape of Prenzlauer Berg—the drawings and paintings capture the unhurried life of his neighbourhood. In contrast to the aforementioned clichés, this ordinariness seems all the more unsettling because it renders any thirst for sensation futile and, conversely, holds up a mirror to it. His scenes always appear to be observed from a neutral distance, so that they can be regarded neither as ‘Milljöh’ studies nor as a chronicle of a metropolis. With no regard for academic traditions and ignoring the oppressive notion of progress inherent in the avant-garde principle, Maximilian Kirmse’s work sees stylistic and aesthetic elements of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture come together in a completely unforced manner, merging into an inseparable conglomerate that constitutes his idiosyncratic yet precise signature. […]
(Dr Michael Hering from Maximilian Kirmse – BERLIN MON AMOUR)
Bio
Maximilian Kirmse (born 1986 in Berlin) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig and at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. His works have been shown in various institutional exhibitions, including at the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, the Museum Wiesbaden, the Kunsthalle Bozen, and in the solo exhibition ‘Berlin Mon Amour’ at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung | Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. His works are held in private and institutional collections, including the Collection of Contemporary Art of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München | Pinakothek der Moderne, the Kunstfonds des Freistaates Sachsen, the Haus N Collection, Kiel & Athens, and the Hort Collection, NYC.
