In the Hurzlmeierei the Lurchi crawls out of the egg
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fromStefan Behr
conclude
The Caricatura presents the world of the painter and cartoonist Rudi Hurzlmeier. But be careful: It’s easy to get in, but difficult to get out.
We all need a break. Humanity is already visibly becoming wild. This can also be seen on Tuesday morning in the Caricatura Museum. For the artist Rudi Hurzlmeier, the remaining head hair stands up so spectacularly at the press conference, as it was last seen in the Drei-Wetter-Taft advertisement. Next to him sits museum director Achim Frenz and looks so grumpy when he just won the consolation prize at the Holländer-Michel-Lookalike-Contest. The press is just as wet, frozen and motivated as Napoleon’s troops on their way back from Moscow. We all need a break.
So it is a good thing that “Hurzlmeier painting” can be seen in the Caricatura in the coming months. This is a very special art movement, which Frenz gives with “Hurzlmeierei” a very special name. The excellently selected exhibition poster shows how this works. You can see the artist himself there. He sits in a gold-colored, candy-shaped space glider and flies through a sky full of unhealthy colors, with a post-apocalyptic mountain landscape in the background. His hair stands tall (perhaps innate) and he is pursued – or accompanied – by a huge insect. At first glance, all of this looks very cute, but the longer you lose yourself in the picture and step into its world, the more you get caught up in an indefinite horror. Before what, according to Frenz, is “strange and abysmal” that runs through Hurzelmeier’s work.
The artist’s passion gilds, according to his own statements, subjects that “have been banned from modern art” because they are too “kitschy”, especially in mountain, horse and nude painting. They are often opulent and magnificent, and the viewer often does not notice that something is wrong in Hurzlmeier’s world. The peaceful grazing horse, for example, which on closer inspection eats the rider that has just been thrown off. Or a magnificent mountain landscape that would have done Caspar David Friedrich all credit – only that at CDF no malicious cucumbers peek out of crevices like moraines and are up to no good. Sometimes the horror isn’t hidden at all. In the picture “Lurchi crosses the Isar unnoticed near Unterföhring”, for example, a visibly good-humored godzilla-like monster, probably several hundred meters tall, crosses the Isar without the Unterföhringer strolling through the idyllic dying noticing anything. “Flee, you fools!” One would like to call out to them, “Lurchi is crossing the Isar!”. But then you would be right in the middle of Hürzlmeier’s world. And maybe never find my way out.
Like all great artists, Rudi Hurzlmeier has roof damage that is difficult to catalog. No wonder: he was born in 1952 in the monastery sanatorium of the Poor Franciscan Sisters in Mallersdorf (Lower Bavaria), but made the best of it. Rejected four times by the art academy, he went on painting anyway, doing strange things like illustrations of business and espionage topics for the “PM-Magazin” and finally sent an application drawing to the “Titanic”, which came under the eyes of the great Robert Gernhardt. “The draftsman could suit us,” decided the infallible. Gernhardt locuta, causa finita. Today Hurzlmeier draws for God and the world, for media with dubious repute such as “Die Zeit”, “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” or “Spiegel online”, but also for serious magazines such as “Penthouse Magazin”.
Hurzlmeier’s pictures are somewhat like the films by David Lynch: horror always lurks behind the bourgeois facade. The difference is that Hurzlmeier’s facade is clearly recognizable as a caricature. Which makes his art all the more dangerous. Especially at Christmas time. Hurzlmeier’s pictures are the ideal gaslighting gifts for people for whom you want evil. “Oh, how cute!”, The recipient is happy, the picture hangs over his bed – and a few weeks later the target person is sitting screaming “Lurchi is coming!” – in the padded cell and nobody knows why.
There are no pictures in the exhibition that deal with corona or other current nerve-rascals. That is what the artist wanted. Because we all need a break. And the exhibition is also intended as an oasis “for everyone who wants to escape it. And afterwards you will feel much safer when you die. ”This is how Hurzlmeier speaks and looks like a dying moray cucumber out of the crevice, always on the lookout for innocent hikers who can be tasted.
Because no one will feel safer after visiting this exhibition. Of course you can also find one or two thigh knockers there, for example the drawing “After the Resurrection”, in which a freshly reanimated Jesus smears toothpaste on his brush – and the viewer is amazed that he has never thought of it himself that after three days of death, oral hygiene is probably the most urgent priority. But that’s just mimicry, just a door opener to the wondrous and terrible Hurzlmeier world, and Lurchi is always lurking at the end of the path.
But if you can escape it, you may feel better and safer in the real world afterwards. Vaccination helps against viruses. An umbrella helps against rain. Pills help against depression. But so far no herb has grown against nasty cucumbers and carnivorous horses. And to paraphrase Colonel Kurtz, the escaped visitor can mumble to himself on the way home: “I saw the horror … the horror. It was actually quite strange. “