REVERIES, TRUMPETS & TRICKS

The Philara Collection is pleased to present REVERIES, TRUMPETS & TRICKS, an extensive solo exhibition of work by Anton Henning. Works spanning four decades of Henning’s career, with a particular focus on his paintings, are on display. In parallel with this exhibition, the artist is making generous donations of his work to several German, Belgian and Dutch museums, including the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf. In 2025, his work can also be seen at various other institutions, including the Kunsthalle Bremen, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Museum Kurhaus Kleve, the Museum Neuruppin, the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the AkzoNobel Art Foundation in Amsterdam, the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, as well as the Kunsthalle Mannheim and the Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal.

Anton Henning questions art using its own methods. As if through a funnel, with its narrow end towards the viewer, he channels images into the present, filtered through his own gaze. In doing this, he draws on the history of art and design, as well as pop culture and the everyday: references to Polke, Palermo, Courbet, Picasso, and Bacon meet doodles, cows, lamps. This boldly unorthodox approach is reflected in Anton Henning’s career. He did not complete a classical training, abandoning the art academy after only half a semester, but instead learned a wide range of techniques independently. By his mid-twenties, this self-taught artist was already achieving his first successes in New York City; since then, his artistic output has been vast. Henning’s artistic work is particularly characterised by the notion of stylistic individuality coupled with links to tradition. His early ‘jazz pictures’, one of which appears in the exhibition, show some affinity with the psychedelic trends of the turbulent period around 1968.

REVERIES, TRUMPETS & TRICKS presents important works from his various still-life, interior, pin-up, and portrait series, genres which Henning infuses with new life. One of his paintings depicts the crucified Jesus, with a tunnel attached to his navel that projects into the picture space, as if the past is mining its way through to an in-between world – a portrait of loops and coils. Other works evoke wallpaper and familiar furniture designs, while tunnels, eyes, funnels, and appendages burrow into the images. A recurrent motif in Henning’s work is a loose, fluid form, reminiscent of a propeller or boomerang,-which the artist, as a kind of self-referential joke, has named Hennling.

The basis of many of the works is the problem of how art history can be connected to the present. Henning’s approach to finding a solution uses a method that he himself affectionately describes as ‘pilfering’: small, recurring acts of theft that bring history into the present, filtered through the lens of his own style. It is no coincidence that statements challenging the dominance of bourgeois definitions of ‘good taste’ and on originality also feature in Henning’s work. His delight in the exploration of originality and repetition is revealed through such titles as Porträt No. 538 (2018) and Interieur No. 594 (2020). While constantly oscillating between seriousness and humour, the artist always paints with an appreciative approach. He opens up worlds of floral still lifes and enigmatic paradises.

Anton Henning was born in Berlin in 1964 and now lives and works in Manker and Berlin. Since 2022, he has hosted the Antonyme Salon, the name of which is not only a play on the artist’s own name but also the notion of the antonym, by definition a word that is the opposite of another. Here, Henning, together with Wolfgang Ullrich and Jana Noritsch, discusses with guests the achievements and deficiencies of the art of the 20th century and its effects on the present.

Henning’s work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Museum Neuruppin (2025), the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (2017), the Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen (2016), the Georg Kolbe Museum and the Haus am Waldsee, both in Berlin, the Kunsthalle Mannheim and the Wilhelm-Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen, as well as the De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands (all 2009), S.M.A.K, Ghent (2007), the Haus Esters, Krefeld, the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main (both 2005) and the Kunstmuseum Luzern (2003).

His works have also been shown in group exhibitions internationally, including at the Okinawa Prefectural Museum and Art Museum (2024) and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2015), and in the same year at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. His works have also been shown in the Netherlands at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2014), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2012) and the Kunstmuseum Den Haag (2006). In Switzerland, his work has already been included in six exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Luzern.

Henning has also been represented in various group exhibitions in Germany: at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2015), the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2013), the Künstlerverein Malkasten, Düsseldorf (2004), and the Kunstsammlung NRW (2000), among others.

His Interieur No. 253 is permanently installed at the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen. This work encompasses the interior design of the museum’s bistro, including its walls, tables, window glass, lamps, benches, and 15 paintings. He has also designed interior spaces for the Vivantes Hospice in Berlin Tempelhof, where his Interieur No. 511 and Interieur No. 512 serve as places of retreat for personal conversations. His Interieur No. 553 has been installed at the De Pont Museum, Tilburg since 2017.

Exhibition curators: Julika Bosch, Hannah Niemeier