Anton Henning

MASTERdote / antiSINGER is a major exhibition by German artist Anton Henning at Haunch of Venison, London (May - July 2010). Featuring more than 80 works, including painting and sculpture, furniture and drawing, video, and a site specific stained glass window, the exhibition considers Henning's oeuvre as a series of interrelated riddles, precariously positioned between irony and grandeur. The title of the show is a compelling collage of Richard Wagner's opera about art and creativity, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and 'antidote', the medical term for an agent that counteracts a poison. The work itself, and the enigmatic way it is presented, reveals both the absurdist and traditional vein of the artist's humorous and self-aware art, from the seemingly sober to the dazzling and whimsical. Henning is anti-unconventional in his examination and use of traditional (conventional) art genres from portrait, landscape, nude and still life.