NORBERT BISKY, born in Leipzig in 1970, is one of the most successful contemporary figurative painters. At the outset of his international career his paintings were characterized by bright colours that in his most recent works have been succeeded by pictures of a darker palette, which lend an atmosphere of menace to the Berlin-based artist’s oeuvre. The protagonists in his most renowned painting are adolescent men, oftentimes staged in sexually charged situations. Bisky’s provovative sceanarios refer to the figural language of socialist realism and Pop Art, but also the iconography of advertising in the 1950s and 60s. His overall artistic project aims at undermine the subjective effects of totalitarian and commercial aesthetics by inserting moments of queer desire.For “Texte zur Kunst“ Norbert Bisky has produced a ditone print based on a water colour and pencil drawing. The work entitled „08.23 h“ shows eight figures, whose gestalt at times appears fragmented and that are concentrically grouped around a surface in grey and blue at the centre of the composition that within the logic of the images seems to draw them in. In an extreme aerial view, it at times appears as if the part nude, part dressed figures would jump into this attracting abyss, at times as if they have been catapulted out of it. The title “08.23 h“ suggests the exact point in time at which a world-changing event occurred whose consequence are yet to be gauged. Bisky’s drawing thus oscillates between apocalypse and apotheosis.