The Spirit is Weak but the Flesh is Willing

A collection of 16 works by German artist Martin Eder. Published to accompany his solo exhibition at HENI Gallery, London, the book features a conversation with Eder, Damien Hirst and Tim Marlow.

The Spirit is Weak but the Flesh is Willing is an exhibition catalogue to accompany the solo exhibition of new paintings by the Berlin-based artist Martin Eder on show at HENI Gallery, London, in collaboration and support of Newport Street Gallery. Published in a black fabric hardcover with black foil text, the catalogue includes a conversation with Martin Eder, Damien Hirst and Tim Marlow.

Eder’s paintings examine beauty and ugliness, depicting kittens and wide-eyed puppies alongside uncompromising nudes and more sinister and surreal encounters.

The new series of paintings describe a descent into hell – as in Dante’s Inferno – into the deeper regions of the subconscious mind and its dreams. Martin Eder‘s work can be read as a coded irony, a melancholic intermediary stage in the cosmos of New Objectivity, sharp, cynical, anti-attitude, contemporary figurative painting and installation. He is concerned with the issues of metaphysics: the quest for the cognition of the underlying structure and the principles of reality.

The works are full of hidden meanings, secret messages, stories and unsolved mysteries. There is a sense of something uncanny lurking behind each and every corner. In the title of the show, which is a reversal of the well-known biblical quote, the artist says he is attempting to describe the post-pandemic state of mind in which find ourselves.