Jonathan Meese is a German Conceptual artist working within a diverse practice that includes performance, installation, painting, and sculpture. Concerned with themes of power, desire, and identity, Meese often inserts his likeness into his paintings. “I exhume to consume. My body is the reactor in a huge rubbish-recycling-experiment of leaden world and intoxicated images,” the artist has explained of his expressive and animated works. He has developed an uncategorizable body of work, lying somewhere between expressionism and actionism, combining painting, sculpture, installations and performance. His personal mythology is a blend of historical, legendary and science fiction references, evoking figures as varied as Fantômas, Maldoror and Stalin, all of whom represent different facets of the artist’s identity. His work espouses the ‘dictatorship of art’.​

Born on January 23, 1970 in Tokyo, Japan, he studied at the Academy of Art in Hamburg, but left without a degree. He presented one of his early installation works at the first Berlin Biennale, and has since gone on to exhibit at the Stuart Shave Modern Art in London and the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. Over the course of his career Meese has worked in collaboration with a number of important artists included Albert Oehlen, Jörg Immendorf, and Tal R. The artist’s works are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Sammlung Goetz in Munich, and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, among others. He currently lives and works between Berlin and Hamburg, Germany.​