Conny Maier

German artist Conny Maier divides her time between Berlin and Peniche, Portugal, where she acquired a home with a studio a few years ago. Described as ‘one of the most important discoveries in the current German painting scene’, Maier’s figurativeand colourfully luminous paintings draw on very different influences: the expressionism of ‘Die Brücke’ (group of German expressionist painters, formed in Dresden 1905, that had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the 20th century. The founding members were Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rotluff. Later members include Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein), Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) and Paul Gauguin (1848 - 1903), as well as the current discourses on painting that have been held since the ‘new figuration’ (artistic tendencies in post-war art that rejected the aesthetics of impersonal abstract art whilst updating various forms of return to the figurative) of the 1980s.

By reflecting on polarities like power and submission, equilibrium and instability, the human and the non-human, her worksexplores fundamental questions about human nature, ecology, dominance and control. By depicting malleable figures in states of extreme emotion and struggle, Maier’s works take an unflinching look at the final throes of the Anthropocene, asking not only what kind of systems will come to an end but also what our future, in general, will look like. As the curator and art historian Britta Färber writes: ‘Maier’s work speaks of the expulsion from paradise, of the loss of a primordial state, of a great, barely endurable, malaise in the prevailing culture.’

The off-kilter figuration in Maier’s paintings articulate precarity and vulnerability as elemental states of being, thus linking her production to artists like Edvard Munch (1863 - 1944), whose iconic Skrik / The Scream, first exhibited under the title Der Schrei Der Natur / The Scream of Nature, (1893, oil, tempera, pastel and crayon on cardboard, 91 x 73.5 cm, National Museum and Munch Museum, Oslo), has been a potent source of inspiration (symbolising the anxiety of the human condition) for several generations of, not least, German painters.

On the recommendation of the advisory curators Victoria Noorthoorn (director, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina), Hou Hanru (art curator and art critic, based in San Francisco, Paris and Rome, artistic director of the National Museum MAXXI, Rome, 2013-2023) and Udo Kittelmann (former director of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2008-2020), Maier was selected as one of the three recipients (the other two being Maxwell Alexandre from Brazil and Zhang Xu Zhan from Taiwan) of Deutsche Bank’s prestigious Artists of the Year Prize in 2021. ‘What all three have in common’, said Britta Färber (Chief Curator of Deutsche Bank’s art program and responsible for the exhibition of the three artists at the Palais Populaire), ‘is that they came to contemporary art via unusual paths and bring very specific life experiences, worldviews, and cultural influences with them’, partly referring to the fact that Maier is a self-taught painter, who originally trained as a fashion designer and founded a fashion label. Conny Maier was the first German artist that Deutsche Bank honored as ‘Artist of the Year’.

Maier’s recent comprehensive institutional solo exhibition Beautiful Disasters, curated by Udo Kittelmann, at the Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany was on display from 3 September 2023 to 7 April 2024. Her first monograph (edited by Udo Kittelmann and with essays by Martin Herbert, Kristian Vistrup Madsen and Marlene A. Schenk) was published on the occasion of this show. In connection with the exhibition, the Langen Foundation wrote the following about Maier:

With its unique and, for some, provocative aesthetics, Maier’s work consequently tries to have it both ways: bold and bizarre pictorial designs go beyond the ordinary and expected, irritating and captivating impartial viewers, generating fascination and repulsion, provoking fundamental questions about our human existence as well as its continued survival in the face of the twenty-first century’s impending catastrophes without offering any answers. […] Although Maier’s imagined scenarios repeatedly address modern humanity’s primal fears of extinction and loss of identity, of physical and mental deformation, it would be wrong to associate the artist with dystopian, apocalyptic, and thus humorless modes of thought. At many points in her work, she retains a mature sense of dark humor through tragicomic and, at times, absurd scenarios. […] Despite being thrown into a seemingly chaotic juxtaposition of narratives, topoi, and motifs that contest and cross-pollinate each other while their movements never seem to come to a standstill, one nevertheless has a singular aesthetic experience viewing Maier’s work. Its special quality lies in the sense of possibility inherent to the work: the chance to experience beauty in the absence of any ideal harmonic order. […] Maier opens up the possibility of productively combining the sensual enjoyment of art with utopian thinking. While the at times agonizing experience of inescapable ambivalence may always harbor a foreboding of catastrophe, the sites for fantasy and experimental reasoning that Maier creates in her artistic work shed light on the question of what has not yet come to be. In this respect, traces of the not yet abandoned hope for a positive outcome from the supposed catastrophe manifest themselves in the broken, enigmatic beauty of her works. In this sense, they are beautiful disasters, or to put it differently: an outrageous beauty!

The ‘outrageous beauty’ of Maier’s work have been on display in the following, prestigious, international art fairs: Draw Art London, London (2019); Art Berlin, Berlin (2019); Enter Art Fair, Copenhagen (2021); Art Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany (2023 and 2024); Art Brussels, Brussels (2023) and Art Cologne, Cologne, Germany ( 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024).

Conny Maier has also shown her works in the following solo exhibitions: Amerikanische Situation & Zigaretten, Volume Galerie, Berlin (2014); Coke First, Beinghunted. / net.work, Berlin (2015); Coke First Pt. II, BOLD Room, Los Angeles, U.S.A. (2016); Alles very good / Nothing matters, ung5, Cologne, Germany (2017); A. Tennis, Parallell Vienna, Vienna (2017); Am Rothenbaum,Ruttkowski;68, Paris (2018); Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse 2, Art Berlin, Berlin (2019); I didn’t mean to burn the woods, solo show curated by Office Impart, S.M.A.C., Berlin (2019); Domestic, König Galerie, Berlin (2020); Wald, book release & edition, König Galerie, Berlin (2020); Die Zähmung, Kunstverein Heppenheim, Heppenheim, Germany (2020); Grenzgänge 2, König Galerie, Seoul (2021); Feels like rabies, Société, Berlin (2022); Where have all the flowers gone?, De11Lijnnen, Oudenburg, Belgium (2022); Durst Steine Scherben, Ruttkowski;68, Paris (2022) and Beautiful Disasters, Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany (2023).

To this could be added following, impressive, list of group exhibitions: Berliner Liste, Galerie Hermann & Wagner, Berlin(2005); Reseen, MADE, Berlin (2013); Extended Visions, Blockbuster Exhibition Galerie, Berlin (2015); Hideout FM, Hideout FM Gallery, Los Angeles, U.S.A (2016); Woman in Disguise, Volume Galerie, Berlin (2016); Hyper Hyper, Michael Reid Galerie, Berlin(2017); Dorf, Wullenstetten, Germany (2017); Mixed Pickles 2, Ruttkowski;68/ Michael Horbach Stiftung, Cologne, Germany (2017); Waisting Time - Vol. 1 - The Nature Edition, Objekte unserer Tage, Berlin (2018); Grand Opening, Ruttkowski;68, Cologne, Germany (2018); Provincetown, MEWO Kunsthalle, Memmingen, Germany (2018); Mixed Pickles 3, Ruttkowski;68, Gallery Weekend, Berlin (2018); My body doesn’t like summer, Haverkampf Galerie, Berlin (2018); Tangerine Dreams, RBMA Funkhaus, Berlin (2018); Grand Opening, Ruttkowski;68, Paris (2018); Mixed Pickles 4, Michael Horbach Stiftung, Cologne, Germany (2018); Dorf 2, Wullenstetten, Germany (2018); Lichtstrasse, Ruttkowski;68, Cologne, Germany (2018); Atlantis 3000, PM Gallery, Lisbon (2019); Atlantis 3000, Atelier Concorde, Lisbon (2019); Disorder, Los Angeles, U.S.A. (2019); Mixed Pickles 5, Berlin (2019); Dorf 3, Wullenstetten, Germany (2019); 04, PM/AM, London (2019); Mixed Pickles 6, Michael Horbachstiftung, Cologne, Germany (2019); Nine To Know, Ruttkowski;68, Paris (2020); Conny Maier - Andreas Schlitten 002, duo show, Ruttkowski;68, Paris (2020); Art Brussels, group show with Ruttkowski;68 - online view, Art Brussels, Brussels (2020); Mixed Pickles 7, Ruttkowski;68, Cologne, Germany (2020); Mixed Pickles 8, Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin (2020); Dorf 4 - The last one, Kunstverein Ulm, Ulm, Germany (2020); You Can Do Better - Bad Painting, Elektrohalle Rhomberg, Salzburg, Austria (2020); Art Cologne@König Galerie, König Galerie, Berlin (2020); This Must Be The Place, Villa Schöningen, Potsdam, Germany (2021); Frenemies, curated by Dennis Buck & Marlene A. Schenk, Berlin (2021); Artist of the Year 2020, Deutsche Bank, Palais Populaire Berlin (2021); Die Brücke, CFHILL, Stockholm (2022); Opening Group Show, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich, Switzerland (2022); How to know how, Neue Galerie Gladbeck, Zürich, Switzerland (2022); The King is dead, long live the Queen, Museum Frieda Burda, Baden Baden, Germany (2023); Dorf 7 - Überführung in die Bodenlage, Sommer.Frische.Kunst., Bad Gastein, Austria (2023); Blind Taste, ARBAG, Lisbon (2024) and Houdini, Ruttkowski;68, Düsseldorf, Germany (2024).

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