Miron Schmückle. Flesh for Fantasy

PRESS RELEASE

1 DECEMBER 2023 TO 14 APRIL 2024
Contemporary Art Collection

The Romanian-German artist Miron Schmückle (b. in Sibiu/Hermannstadt in 1966) is among the singular protagonists of contemporary art. Growing up in Romania under Ceaușescu, already as a child he dreamt himself away to other worlds—worlds that, on the far side of the Iron Curtain, seemed forever inaccessible. From an early age, he took a keen interest in art history on the one hand and the flora and fauna of faraway places on the other. Together they led to a uniquely coherent oeuvre. From 1 December 2023 to 14 April 2024, the Städel Museum is presenting a solo exhibition featuring 28 works by Miron Schmückle, including newly executed works never before on view to the public.

Associated with the idea of the jungle or primeval forest from the outset, Schmückle’s visual cosmos oscillates between fine-painterly hyperrealism and undisguised escapism, between the precise observation of nature and an exuberant imagination. The virtually botanical approach of his depictions belies the fact that his complex creations originate not in nature but in fantasy. Based on his understanding and observations of nature with its widely differing colours, forms, and surface textures, they bear a relation to florilegia and exhibit similarities to Renaissance and Baroque plant and still-life painting of the kind once collected in cabinets of art and curiosities.

With the series Cosmic Attractors (2023) carried out especially for the exhibition Flesh for Fantasy, the artist invites the visitors to partake of the spatial and temporal complexity of his floral figments of the imagination, which in his conception are three-dimensional. By arranging different large-scale views and visual manifestations of one and the same plant composition in space, he creates an installation in which viewers can literally witness the plants’ growth.

Curator: Dr Philipp Demandt (Director, Städel Museum)

Download the complete press release here.