Many of Michael Lassel's paintings can be read like a book. The objects depicted, with all their historical and cultural references, offer the curious viewer a welcome challenge to follow the traces laid down and explore these global connections, unraveling them piece by piece.

In the painting entitled "The Tree" from 2014, I was interested in the arrangement of banknotes in front of a symbol of a supposed trademark, "Europe as a Circle of Stars." First, it is important to clarify and clarify the specific types of banknotes in question.

When British pound notes are seen next to Romanian and Hungarian banknotes, initial references to Michael Lassel's biographical background, his origins in Transylvania (Romania), his cultural and political connection to Hungary, and his travels to England and France can already be drawn.

Surprisingly, in all the texts I have found on the masterful trompe l'oeil paintings, I have not found a detailed interpretation of a single work from his oeuvre. This perceived lack of interpretative approach is regrettable and requires a thorough examination of the artist's work, who presents over 120 trompe l'oeil paintings from his creative period between 1989 and 2024 in the "WORKS" menu on his website.

According to him, he has painted around 150 paintings in this style to date, March 2025.

At first glance, we see a multitude of differently colored banknotes above a pile of coins, all of which, we initially assume, originate from European countries or states. In Lassel's work, we repeatedly encounter depictions of coins and banknotes. The references these real objects make to concepts such as prosperity, power, wealth, nations, rulers, and the numerical values ​​of these means of exchange are only one side of the coin.

With his sophisticated arrangements, Lassel conveys references to the depicted numbers, portraits, and graphic elements of the coins and banknotes, always also to historical events, politicians, rulers, scientists, architecture, artists, musicians, poets, and thinkers who have been "immortalized" on the banknotes and coins, even when they no longer meet current trade and commodity exchange requirements and have become practically "worthless." LASSEL uses these "portrait graphics" and "painted reliefs" as eye-catchers, allowing the story of the depicted scenes to be imagined beyond the frame through thought and association games.

Viewing is a new way of seeing, gaining knowledge through masterful representation. (See works "Bankier und guter Gesellschaft" 2019, "Das Vermögen" 2016) The stacked banknotes shown in the painting "The Tree" are arranged in this work so that they take on the shape and surface of a triangle or pyramid. In reference to the title, this could be seen as a tree formation: the broad base at the bottom and the tapering upwards, a point reaching into the treetop.

A toy-like winged horse figure, a "Pegasus" symbol, sits enthroned at the top. The word "treetop" also has a certain connotation when one identifies the portrait of the British Queen Elizabeth II, wearing a diadem, on a 5-pound note as Queen of England (£5), in the central midfield. The entire banknote arrangement is arranged against the backdrop of a panel wall consisting of several wooden boards.

This wall, in turn, displays several striking characteristic features. Eleven five-pointed stars of equal size are emblazoned in a wooden circular ring relief. The blue paint, which probably once covered the entire wooden surface with a uniform royal blue varnish, has either weathered, flaked off, or disappeared completely.

The end grain of the boards is fascinatingly presented in relief with its linear patterns. This, too, alludes to its growth and biological origin. Dead wood as a building material and wall that blocks the view into a spatial background. This circular star formation on tree material creates thought experiments on nature and timber, forest and land, life and deadwood. Tree of life, family tree, ancestry, and ramifications. The fact that the paper banknotes are mostly made of cotton and contain cellulose and color printing is the material core and real reference.

"I want to depict the world with more emphasis": Michael Lassel (right) with gallery owner John Hammond in the foyer of the Stadttheater. Photo: Thomas Scherer

FÜRTH – "World Theater" is the name of the new exhibition that John Hammond's art agency has been presenting at the Stadttheater for a few days. It leads directly into the dazzling stylistic worlds of Fantastic Realism and Magic Illusionism. Michael Lassel, an internationally renowned representative of trompe-l'oeil painting for many years, presents 26 oil paintings from his extensive oeuvre between 1991 and 2024. But what does trompe-l'oeil actually mean? The French term means something like "deceptive appearance" or "optical illusion" and describes a type of painting that, through precise perspective representation, creates such pictorial depth that it appears almost three-dimensional – an art with a long history; many Baroque churches are full of trompe-l'oeil effects. "I don't just deceive the eye, I also deceive the senses.

I want to depict the world with a bit more emphasis," says Michael Lassel about his painting, which is inspired, among other things, by 17th-century Dutch art. In his three-dimensional pictorial spaces, the artist combines elements of still life with symbolically exaggerated, enigmatic objects. He places familiar everyday objects in a surreal juxtaposition. Thus, the combination of the depicted objects—be they busts, instruments, tools, playing cards, coins, or quirky finds from flea markets—evokes a wide variety of associations. "You can only interpret what you already know," says Lassel. And indeed, there are many hidden clues, quotes, and symbols to discover once you immerse yourself in his old-fashioned, in the best sense, visual worlds.

"Schöner Brunnen" (Beautiful Fountain), for example, is the title of an oil painting from 1995 that Lassel playfully constructed from beer mugs and gingerbread tins—objects commonly associated with Nuremberg. The Nuremberg funnel even looms high above, with shadowy etchings of the Schöner Brunnen (Beautiful Fountain) visible in the background. What isn't immediately apparent is pointed out by cultural manager Georg von Matuschka in his introduction: "On a gingerbread tin, Michael Lassel immortalized himself in a portrait pose with three French trompe-l'oeil artists, thereby creating a connection between the Franconian metropolis of Nuremberg and France. And he humorously inserted his own date of birth as the expiration date."

In Lassel's 2021 painting "Verlassenes Nest" (Abandoned Nest), alongside an antique belt, old musical instruments, and the artist's pipe collection, there is also a hidden quote from the "Chocolate Girl" by Geneva artist Jean-Étienne Liotard from the "Alte Meister" gallery in Dresden. "Putting such quotations together creates a new story," says the painter, who gives each object in the picture its own significance. "Melancolia," created last year, is the last work Lassel completed for the current exhibition and refers to farewell and transience. At the center is a bust of a girl, a tear streaming from her closed eye; the pompous fantasy architecture above is broken open and speaks of past splendor.

Michael Lassel, born in 1948 as a Transylvanian Saxon in Romania and living in Fürth since 1986, has participated in exhibitions worldwide, from Geneva, Paris, and London to Singapore, Tokyo, and New York. He also created a 1998 contribution to the gallery of mayors of the cloverleaf city: the portrait of former mayor Uwe Lichtenberg, who served from 1984 to 1996, hanging in Fürth's town hall.