room for humour

Many of Michael Lassel's paintings can be read like a book. The objects depicted, with all their historical and cultural references, offer the curious viewer a welcome challenge to follow the traces laid down and explore these global connections, unraveling them piece by piece.

In the painting entitled "The Tree" from 2014, I was interested in the arrangement of banknotes in front of a symbol of a supposed trademark, "Europe as a Circle of Stars." First, it is important to clarify and clarify the specific types of banknotes in question.

When British pound notes are seen next to Romanian and Hungarian banknotes, initial references to Michael Lassel's biographical background, his origins in Transylvania (Romania), his cultural and political connection to Hungary, and his travels to England and France can already be drawn.

Surprisingly, in all the texts I have found on the masterful trompe l'oeil paintings, I have not found a detailed interpretation of a single work from his oeuvre. This perceived lack of interpretative approach is regrettable and requires a thorough examination of the artist's work, who presents over 120 trompe l'oeil paintings from his creative period between 1989 and 2024 in the "WORKS" menu on his website.

According to him, he has painted around 150 paintings in this style to date, March 2025.

At first glance, we see a multitude of differently colored banknotes above a pile of coins, all of which, we initially assume, originate from European countries or states. In Lassel's work, we repeatedly encounter depictions of coins and banknotes. The references these real objects make to concepts such as prosperity, power, wealth, nations, rulers, and the numerical values ​​of these means of exchange are only one side of the coin.

With his sophisticated arrangements, Lassel conveys references to the depicted numbers, portraits, and graphic elements of the coins and banknotes, always also to historical events, politicians, rulers, scientists, architecture, artists, musicians, poets, and thinkers who have been "immortalized" on the banknotes and coins, even when they no longer meet current trade and commodity exchange requirements and have become practically "worthless." LASSEL uses these "portrait graphics" and "painted reliefs" as eye-catchers, allowing the story of the depicted scenes to be imagined beyond the frame through thought and association games.

Viewing is a new way of seeing, gaining knowledge through masterful representation. (See works "Bankier und guter Gesellschaft" 2019, "Das Vermögen" 2016) The stacked banknotes shown in the painting "The Tree" are arranged in this work so that they take on the shape and surface of a triangle or pyramid. In reference to the title, this could be seen as a tree formation: the broad base at the bottom and the tapering upwards, a point reaching into the treetop.

A toy-like winged horse figure, a "Pegasus" symbol, sits enthroned at the top. The word "treetop" also has a certain connotation when one identifies the portrait of the British Queen Elizabeth II, wearing a diadem, on a 5-pound note as Queen of England (£5), in the central midfield. The entire banknote arrangement is arranged against the backdrop of a panel wall consisting of several wooden boards.

This wall, in turn, displays several striking characteristic features. Eleven five-pointed stars of equal size are emblazoned in a wooden circular ring relief. The blue paint, which probably once covered the entire wooden surface with a uniform royal blue varnish, has either weathered, flaked off, or disappeared completely.

The end grain of the boards is fascinatingly presented in relief with its linear patterns. This, too, alludes to its growth and biological origin. Dead wood as a building material and wall that blocks the view into a spatial background. This circular star formation on tree material creates thought experiments on nature and timber, forest and land, life and deadwood. Tree of life, family tree, ancestry, and ramifications. The fact that the paper banknotes are mostly made of cotton and contain cellulose and color printing is the material core and real reference.