The following article is from our December 2007 issue.

Expelled From 'False Paradise' German painter Norbert Bisky's apocalyptic visions bewitch the international art market - By Klaus Grimberg

He's currently the most talked-about German painter of his generation. In just a few short years, Norbert Bisky, born in Leipzig in 1970, has created a stir internationally. In his large-format, garish oil paintings, the artist exposes the "false paradise" that he was led to believe in during his youth in East Germany and also after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In the past, his images of blond, blue-eyed youth with beautiful athletic bodies, showing off and horsing around on the beach in blazing sunlight earned Norbert Bisky the disfavor of a fair number of critics. They felt his seemingly heroic scenes of unblemished youth represented the kind of naive embrace of physical perfection that harked back to the aesthetic sensibility of socialist realism or worse − echoed the idealized Germanic hero figures.

But anyone who took a closer look understood, even early on, that those idyllic scenes were an illusion. Bisky describes his artwork as the "appropriation of my own biography − and an ironic distancing from it." Bisky grew up in a family deeply committed to the socialist system. As a child and young man, he spent many a summer at vacation camps where the main goal was to toughen up the young boys with competitive sports. The almost religiously excessive cheerfulness of those camps, their ceremonial solemnity and the assumption of a carefree environment − as a young adult Bisky was, as he himself put it, "painting [those] off my chest."

Bisky was 19 when the Berlin Wall came down. During the collapse of communism, he was in the East German People's Army. His military service ended in March 1990. Although the implosion of the East German state caught Bisky unaware, he enjoyed the anarchic freedom of the transitional period in the formerly divided Berlin. It was not until a few years later that he decided to study art. From 1994 to 1999, he attended Berlin's Art College, studying with Georg Baselitz, one of the most important contemporary German artists. As the millennium turned, Bisky was increasingly represented at avant-garde exhibitions and quickly attained a reputation among insiders as an exceptionally talented artist.

One of Bisky's first patrons and a collector of his art was Guido Westerwelle, the openly gay leader of Germany's free market liberals, the Free Democratic Party (FDP). Some joked that the appetizingly painted young men were apparently the perfect ornament for the drawing rooms of the gay neo-bourgeoisie. In a provocative twist, Bisky's father Lothar, who was a functionary in the PDS, the successor party to the East German communists, and is today one of two leaders of the socialist party, The Left, is one of Westerwelle's most bitter political opponents in the German parliament.

According to art historian Christoph Tannert, Bisky's real subject is "criticism of facades." If, in his earlier work, the artist exposed the prescribed contentment of the socialist system, his current focus is on the marketing-led, consumer-oriented promises of true happiness in the West. Bisky is presenting his current works in two large exhibitions − at Berlin's Haus am Waldsee and New York's Leo Koenig Gallery. They are enigmatic compositions of a world turned on its head, collapsing under the weight of false promises.

Bisky's scenes go far beyond the horizons of quotidian experience. The still stunningly beautiful, mostly male figures in his paintings now stand in stark contrast to undisguised violence, the headlong pursuit of pleasure and shameless ruthlessness. Without being able to put a finger on exactly why, Bisky's work triggers a feeling of unease. The viewer is overcome with the creeping suspicion that the lovely pretence of material security is much more fragile than we like to believe. With his apocalyptic visions, Bisky touches on the abyss of a barely comprehensible present.

Yet Bisky is far too smart to put clear-cut political signposts on his work. The paintings provide enough space for the viewer to get close to them both as an observer and a catechizer. Not to mention that the gestalt of the artist himself is fundamentally different from the gloomy skepticism of his work. Anyone encountering the seemingly youthful man in his student clothing is quickly taken with his friendly demeanor and his rare talent for talking about his work in a manner that is both modest and self-assured. Instead of giving himself airs, Bisky prefers to talk passionately about technique, paints and brushes, and about the process of his art. So it's easy to believe him when he says: "Nobody who has once stood in front of a white canvas and created something from nothing successfully will ever want to do anything else."

- Klaus Grimberg is a Berlin-based journalist.