Anton Franz Hoeger is German painter born 1956 in Munich. Although he graduated in the late 70s of the last century, he fully dedicated himself to painting only in 2000. ”Vienna School“, Hoeger’s work deals with social issues, such as the present position of women in the society, or the attempts at the destruction of man manifested by a low-quality TV programme. He also creates thematic corpuses, such as integration, participation and power of the media, as well as rewritings of history.
Hoeger’s paintings are the mirror of our present existence. Anton Hoeger’s work should be seen as a part of creative and indicative actualities of our time. In that sense, the deciding factor in his artistic creation full of imagination is not one’s own experience as a consumer of art, but the processes that depend on cognition, which are shown as the essence of truth
in modern philosophy. Hoeger shapes dystopian scenes in an otherworldly way, whereas hallucinatory illusions are always put in relation to reality, through the environment, signs, attributes.
Branching of the style of painting that interpenetrates past, present and imaginary future-bearing interpretation of reality with surreality is achieved with painting illusionism.
Historical mannerism derived from the mannerism of the Renaissance – artist’s inner drawing that projects into optical magic and multi-perspective mischiefs of shifted spatialities and proportions, which through trompe l’oeil of the variant of Baroque naturalism in Höger’s version fits and then by sieving the cold aesthetics reflects in the movement Neue Sachlichkeit – especially in the form of Magic Realism of the 1920s.
In a different manner, this is reflected through the poetics of unconscious mirror image of dreams, structure of image psychoanalysis, surreal and fantasy of the Austrian School of the 1950s, the circle of which the artist also comes from.
These seeming diversities, in fact, similarities, are then run through a pop-art filter, more precisely the art of popular culture. It transmits irony, criticism, but also the grandiosity and fascinating magic of the then and present consumer system that culminates precisely in the present culture of reflex-conditioned consumption in the new cathedrals of power – retail chains and shopping centres, symbols of power of mega corporations. The artist connects all of the above with the collision of mythical and biblical motifs, their systematic shaping appropriate to the present state of affairs and chilled environments.
Then using his hyper-style, hyper-optical eye illusion, motif and meaning brings the painting heritage closer to the contradictory spirit of contemporary culture – the mirror of global civilisation. In such interpretation, Höger’s paintings always reflect the backside of the culture that emerges, penetrates through the crazy beautiful, stretched to the breaking point, aesthetics of the world. We know, often dissected, disintegrated, the coldest, darkest, otherworldly man’s appearances and representations, states of consciousness and unconscious, with a deep insight into the mythical and religious reveal the opposite to the observer – the artist’s longing for humane and humanity.
Höger’s works are exhibited in numerous cities; Montreal, New York,
Zagreb, Florence, Munich, Nuremberg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Kiel...
just to name a few.
Solo exhibitions:
2005-Solo exhibition Montreal (Gora-Gallery);
2005-Solo exhibition Soho, New York (Agora-Gallery);
2006-Solo exhibition Munich (Realismusgalerie); 2007-Solo
exhibition Bamberg (Senger);
2008-2015 Solo exhibition Munich (Störpunkt);
2017-Solo exhibition (Zagreb) Museum
Coming:
2019-Soloexhibition Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik
Group exhibitions:
2005-Group exhibition Soho, New York, (Agora-Gallery);
2007-Biennale Florence;
2010-Tübingen (Schedhalle);
2012-Group exhibition Munich (Störpunkt);
2013-Group exhibition Essen (Kunstturm);
2013-Group exhibition Coburg (Kunstverein)
2014-Art Stroke (Munich);
2014-Art Fair (Cologne);
2015-Art Fair (Cologne);
2016-Luxembourg ART FAIR
2018-Group exhibition Rovinj Heritage Museum;
2018-Art Fair San Diego
2018-Chelsea, New York ; Connecticut (Ohio);
Art Awards:
2011- Blue/Orange Art Award Coburg; 2012-2018 some Art Awards and Cover
pages of Art Magazines; 2017 Best show of HDLU (Museum of Contemporary Art
Zagreb); 2018 - Best of Show-Yellow-Colors of Humanity Art Gallery
Publications:
Anton Höger – Werke 2004-2005 (ISBN-10: 3866110766); Anton Höger –
"Unerschöpflich" (2012) (ISBN-10: 3777460915)
Art magazines: Art; Mundus; Art Profile; Kunst; Circle Quarterly 2017/ 2018; International Artist
International Contemporary Artists volume XI (Winner of the title page); ….
