Thomas Palme is a master of drawing. He loves and dominates the two royal disciplines of his talent alike: The portrait and the nude. In his most recent works: "the one hundred most influential men in history" Palme combines both genres in a grotesque manner. Thereby our conception and our experience of reality, sexuality and power are radically questioned.
Anarchists, dictators, artists, historical and fictional figures of past centuries and recent decades are combined into the paradox of a 100 most important chart. What has the human race done with those characters since their existence? How do we treat our ancestors? Has our perception made some of them into preposterous personas automatically? Education transforms us into trained followers of ideological believers of spreadsheets. To assemble an objective and official 100 list is a grim action in its own, desired by people who are looking for a controlled world order. Creators of 100 individuals data defend their reality and impose it on us.
Palme, is the author of his stroke as well as of the written word. He points out that the reality that allows such a list does not exist. "Human nature is greed", "selfdestruction of dignity", "Obama Bin Bush", "Immanuel Kant looking at Orgon man" - the idiot -, is to be read next to nutty figures we believe to see in a surrounding of words, chinese characters within Christian religious suppression. This global drawing is not objective and resembles only a fake reality, which is not an ideologically charged reality. "Kung fu Panda" is filled with ideology and in some world an important real life celebrity.
Yet, reality is obscene. There are micro blogs that tell us about fathers who beget daughters with their daughters. People die live in front of a webcam and we watch it on the screen in the backseat in our taxi. The internet would be half so powerful without those millions of clicks on pornographic websites. If our reality is obscene the Drawing is obscene, therefor the Drawing in a gallery is obscene. Art is not a "Huis Clos" that generates its own conviction of nodding people who made their lists and cower inside an oasis of so called art. You can't escape this burden while creating an idiological reality on order to destroy others. Accept that reality is a gigantic chaos and in case of need, laugh about it.
Thomas Palme, born 1967 in Immenstadt, Germany, is a highly acclaimed German artist with numerous exhibitions world wide. At age 19 he started to study art in Munich at the class of Hans Baschang before he moved to Vienna to participate in the course of Arnulf Rainer and graduated in Düsseldorf the masterclass of Michael Buthe. In 2010 he was honored with a Grant by the prestigious Kunsthalle Krems in Austria. "The one hundred most influential men in history" is Palmes second solo exhibition at stageBACK Shanghai.
