Henning Strassburger brings the anxieties and hopes of his generation into the heart of his painting with a fatal equanimity. “People no longer see innocently, so as a painter I cannot do that either”. The world we live in is vague and sketchy. Identification happens on surfaces. We constantly take on changing roles in changing constellations and contexts. To believe that any image remains innocent is an illusion.

In his new works, Strassburger has reached way back into the 20th century. Back to early Pop Art and to Jasper Johns whose gray pictures with their ciphers, numbers and letters came when the contradictory codes and symbols of our contemporary world were only just emerging. For his own grey paintings, Strassburger has used leftover paints to mix together “the most colorful gray you can imagine”. A gray that does not lack color, instead uniting all tones and moods in one.



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