Moritz Schleime (born 1978 in Köpenick, former East Berlin; 1984 relocated to Kreuzberg, West Berlin, Germany) studied from 1998-2005 at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin under Prof. Hanns Schimansky, Prof. Werner Liebmann and Prof. Katharina Grosse. Moritz Schleime lives and works in Berlin and Leipzig, Germany.
The art of Moritz Schleime is a colorful rush of symbolism. Music, literature, art history - the entire spectrum of modern pop culture serves Schleime as a source of inspiration for his works. Hipsters, rockers and hairy monsters meet Western culture in colorful and surreal scenes. Themes like death, destruction, boredom and emptiness serve as key elements in his works. But for Schleime the confrontation with death is hardly all that bad. As the artist himself says, "[...] after death comes birth". Thus his works position themselves between life and death, movement and stillness, intoxication and sobriety. But alongside all this morbidity there is also romance and hope. Half-empty wine bottles decorated with little hearts next to hung-over dreamers, lovers made of skeletons in a frenzy or chain-smoking captains of love boats. They all find their place in the chaotic world of Moritz Schleime, where opposites coexist. With a great deal of humor and irony, Schleime confronts us with his view of the modern world, which often seems too absurd to be true, but is all too familiar to us.
Moritz Schleime was one of 53 young German artists in the large museum group exhibition "Now! Painting in Germany Today", which was on view in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Museum Wiesbaden and the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz - Museum Gunzenhauser in 2019/2020. He is included in the publication "Dissonance - Platform Germany", which was published by DCV in 2022.