"Anjo vs. Dürer and other great Masters", Anjo Haase, Sparkasse Fürth, Fürth, Bavaria,

22.03. - 20.04.2012

[Anjo Haase]

Fürther Nachrichten, 29.03.2012, CLAUDIA SCHULLER

The Dragon has got his hands full with the capitation fee

Playful and accurate: Anjo Haase’s ironic collages don’t respect the heroes of art history

FÜRTH - Vincent van Gogh's sunflowers love bees and talk loose about it. Henri Fantin-Latour's fruit rots away on its tray and wails: "Shit, now I have a spot". Those vegetables that provoce a demo on a shimmering van-Gogh-field don’t have such worries. The carrots and cucumbers ask: "Eat more meat!" Such is the humour of cartoonist Anjo Haase – to see at the moment in the Sparkasse-headquarter at the Maxstraße.

Anjo Haase grabs with fondness famous works of art, alienates them a bit and lets them enter into a dialogue with the present.

Haase explaines on the basis of Giovanni Bellini, how prevention worked in 1500: apparently with balls as big as a beach ball. But these pills do not work, like the artist from Fürth puts into the mouth of a fancy lady. Dragons have their hands full with the capitation fee - it will cost you dearly if one has seven of them - and in Caspar David Friedrich's romantic overcast sky, Ice cream vans are flying. A misty, transcendent mountain landscape of the master is counteracted with the subtitle "The EU summit chain is a fantastic prospect".

No, Mr. Haase can’t be classified as really religious or even mystical. Therefore he posted an inconclusive Jesus in front of a sign that shows the way into this mortal world. Even Nuremberg’s Albrecht Durer icon gets what’s coming to him: The rabbit must be, after all it is a near-namesake of the cartoonist. Just that the animal by him is sitting on crumbling ground and the ground is cracked. What the tiresome self-portrait in a fur coat concerns, Haase draped it in a big raccoon skin.

The photo collages are perfect, gleaming digital prints and are complemented by high quality hand screen printing. Modern comics are also includet in the exhibition, which is presented by John Hammond’s Art Agency in the premises of the bank. A bee is worried where its friends are, and another replies, "All in the network", at which the spider underneath utters grinning, "I Like it". That’s the way it goes in the digital and real world.

Drawing is not one of his greatest strength of the award-winning artist from Fürth, but his ironic comments on the classics of painting, his sardonic swipes and eloquent titles hit the nail on the head. When Haase cheekily uses historical art work and puts it into new contexts, he takes a bead on the past that has from today's perspective become a little ridiculous. But he does not want to destroy, is not a rebel, but respects his sources and their creators. Haase rather prefers to give his two cents to social morality. And these comments are illuminating, especially in historical terms, if one looks at changes over the centuries.