Everyday Heroes - The Early Works of Norbert Bisky

In his early pictures, this artist draws us into a world of boys and young men who seem to celebrate normal everyday heroism, appearing sporty and well-tanned. When one examines the swarm of half-naked bodies more closely, certain parallels to early images of the Wild Boys from Berlin's Moritzplatz in the 1980s come to mind.

Above all, Norbert Bisky's pictures are territories with their own laws, in which the artist celebrates diving up and down in the stream of paint, playing with the possibilities of painting, and using the brush to create forms that become reality - or at least illusions of it. When Bisky paints, he is in a complete state of his personal presence of mind.

It demonstrates a masterful command of the medium when Bisky treats oil paint so lightly as if he were working on a watercolour. But once something is on the canvas, it stays. Corrections later on are not an option. Bisky is extremely critical of himself. Paintings that do not meet his quality standards do not leave the studio.

Bisky measures the body areas of his pictorial subjects, as the German gymnastics educator known as "Father of Gymnastics Jahn" commanded. His young people throw and catch imaginary balls, wrestle, jump and fly. The settings are sandy beaches, shorelines, clearings in the woods, and airfields over which the guys frolic. The scenes taste like mineral-vitamin drinks and energy bars,  just as much as they evoke memories of sports festivals or summer camps. However, Bisky has no intention of aligning commercial bodies or propagating any ideologies. Bisky wants to paint. He strives for the ultimate stage of a painting that follows its very own rules and simultaneously advances the fusion of artistic imagination and external reality.

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