No other motif better confirms the fact that Rubens’ daring inventions still fascinate us and that many of his works seem extremely modern today than his double portrait The Honeysuckle Bower at Alte Pinakothek München. In this painting, Isabella Brant and Peter Paul Rubens present themselves as a couple newly in love. For this part of our double exhibition, artist Slawomir Elsner (*1976) directs his attention on the much beloved masterwork and, by way of his project Case Studies, investigates it before our very eyes. In his suite of twelve large-format drawings, all created especially for this exhibition and the same size as the painting (178 x 136,5 cm), the artist uses drawings for his ‘case study’ and through them articulates his question after the relevance and meaning of the original. He goes so far as to make the motif vibrate before our eyes in his drawn reminiscences of image and afterimage, or else, to challenge our perception and recollection of Rubens’ painting with his fields of watercolor.

Ultimately, his imaginatively rendered artistic Case Study aims at posing to us the question after the fate of art works within our personal hoard of images in the age of digital availability. In which manner do historical paintings of the rank of The Honeysuckle Bower address us, what do we remember after our museum visit and what kind of independent life does the image take on in our memory? We predict that Case Studies by Slawomir Elsner will afford visitors the pleasure of analog viewing and an opportunity to visit both the Pinakothek der Moderne and the Alte Pinakothek.