Big Trilemma

View

Raised in the former East Germany, Norbert Bisky decided to become an artist upon the fall of the Berlin Wall. He produces exuberant, colorful, image-laden paintings through which he explores the intertwining of Communism, religion, and the state. Influenced in part by the mandated, propagandistic Socialist Realist imagery with which he grew up, Bisky states: “For an artist it is fascinating to have a world in your mind [that] does not exist anymore. I grew up with all these images of happy people, all these religious promises. [. . .] It has a lot to do with my work because I try to paint those images of paradise and to see if it could really live up to the promise.”