Dirk Meinzer

SISYPHOS' BROTHER, SMILING

SISYPHOS' BROTHER, SMILING
We never tire of looking at each other -
Only the mountain and I.
(from li pos "alone, looking at the mountain")
I have shown myself to him in a condition of undifferentiated, universal equilibrium.
Where the mermaid romps, there is the abyss.
Where the water rests, there is the abyss.
Where the water circulates, there is the abyss.
The abyss has nine names.
These were three of them.
(from chuang-tses "speeches and parables")
Like a deep-sea fisherman Dirk Meinzer erects his canvasses always at night,
listening for the faintest Nuancengezwitscher (exhibition title 2015) thats chirping away and records it
in thoughtless awareness; embarking into the unknown, he is without zeal or ambition, not looking for
fame or fortune, but conscientiously working, trying to hear and keeping hold of it;
this one of a kind artist works with the annulment, the blandness, the archaic, the unimportant or
little one, the grotesque, the disappearance and the intercultural of human-animal relationships -
where do I end, who are you and what can we do (together) ? - let's ROCK !
Dirk Meinzer seems to be always tired and his exhibitions are bearing witness to ecstatic excesses of
unproductive expenditure (e.g. when the paradise starts to fly (away) from 2013), which he calls a
standing water in der lichtung des seins, resting without choppiness or direction, not illuminated or
irradiated, but stumbled upon in the volatility of a transition -
unlike Dr. Hook (remember "when you're in love with a beautiful woman"?), Dirk Meinzer finds
beatitude curdled in vapidness' bosom, constantly structuring experience in the form of images,
risen by chance from mankinds archetypen -
in a situative dreamlike limbo, he is trying to create in a moment, again and again, generating works
exuding a simple perfection that deprives life of all made meaning -
or, as wolfgang laib put it when receiving his praemium imperiale:
"it is not I sculpting the material, it is the powdered one (staub zu staub) that's making me."
- text by tmanh.de oct. 2015

What is it about your studio space that inspires you?

It is an old tennis club house in the middle of a nature reserve. A bungalo american-style from the 60s. In dark wood with a bar. You go by car over a large lawn directly in front of the door. It is very quiet and I'm looking forward when I look up at night from work and see a deer, a hare, a hedgehog or a mouse in front of the door.

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