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10/9/2010

Wachstum (Growth)

Martin Mertens Munchen, Munich

For the first exhibition in our new additional gallery in Munich we brought together eight young artists with most diverse artistic approaches, but connected by the idea of construction. In October/November there will be a second group exhibition, this time with a focus on the human body. With these two exhibitions we want to complete and intensify the range of artistic positions we have been exploring in several years of gallery work in Berlin so far.

For the exhibition “Wachstum (Growth)” we assembled outstanding pieces by artists whose work progress we have been following for years and who accomplish an enormous variety of artistic expression. Alongside totally abstract color space, site-specific installations and objects to precisely composed architecture fantasies and actual Plein-Air-Painting in the urban space, there is also room for sculptures based on accurate mathematical formulas, neo-surrealistic collages and modern trompe-l’œils.

An oversized cable drum is lying on the floor in the middle of the gallery. By connecting the plug of the cable with the drum, Berlin-based artist ERIK ANDERSEN produces a circuit that represents the circle of human life – a bundle of energy with countless twists and without a clear beginning or a predictable end. In this context the cable drum, meant to be a useful tool, appears to be absurdly functionless, just like the ladder made of cables which Andersen invented especially for this exhibition and which would fall apart if someone wanted to use it. It reminds the observer that striving for progress, “growth” and higher aims always includes the risk of failure.

With the big painting “Wachstum (Growth)” KAI MAILÄNDER, student at the Karlsruher Akademie, contributes the eponymous work to this exhibition, dealing with a motive of formation and renewal. In small plant pots (or color pots?) on a pallet the observer can identify delicate little plants… still vague and occasional one cannot actually anticipate what is about to grow here.
Mailänder’s works mostly deal with nature, respectively natural space cultivated by man. He picks out single elements of nature, puts them into undefined black space and has them develop – slightly threatening – lives of their own.

Young artist PIUS FOX does completely the contrary – many of his mostly small-sized paintings are of vivid colors, painted on oil paper or canvas. He has just finished his master studies at Universität der Künste Berlin. His abstract compositions are characterized by a dynamic, almost expressive paint application that contrasts the extremely well-balanced proportions and subtle color tones of his paintings.

Equally elementary is the artistic approach of British painter JIM HARRIS, who explores color, structure, pastose or scumbling paint application, patterns of light and shade. But unlike Pius Fox, Harris is orientated towards the concrete and devotes himself to details of urban space with no people involved. He works in a very traditional way outdoors and on site, directly in front of the subject. His urban landscapes always originate in his living environment (Amsterdam and New York) and concentrate on very simple motives – a tree, a fountain or reflections on water surfaces.

Also in the works of Berlin-based artist MAIK WOLF people play a marginal role, even though they used to be a central motive in his work. If they do still appear, they only serve as Repoussoir-figures, to make the observer immerse more deeply into the pictorial space.

The central motive of Wolf’s piled up living elements is their constructedness, a “hybrid of terrifying architectonial tower building and habitable sculpture”, as Martin Engler described it in 2009. The – in terms of color – very vivid constructions are strongly connected to reality while at the same time often sliding into the surreal.

The surreal is also a central stylistic device in the group of small collages by MARCEL BÜHLER. This group is part of his monumental piece of work “halbe Reise (half a journey)” containing 180 single pieces and constituting a central work complex. It was created over a period of two years (2008-09). Bühler uses a variety of material and intertwines quotes from the history of art and culture with text fragments, words, painting and drawing – the outcome are highly associative enigmas. Bizarre ideas, humour and compositional precision merge into a whole series of master pieces.

The Berlin painter TIMO NASSERI works much more rational. He devotes himself to the mathematical systems that underlie the complex patterns and structures of Arabic art. In our exhibition, we show one of the important sculptures formed in recent years called ALIF. Alif or Alef is the first letter of the Arabic alphabet which the numeric value 1 is allocated to. The sculpture refers to the work of the Arabic calligrapher Ibn Muqla, who developed the first body of rules for standardizing and harmonizing the writing system. Nasseri picks up on his suggestion to build up the image of 1 from 5 dots (drawn with an ink-pen, it is 5 rhombuses), and adjusts the harmonic proportions to the whole sculpture. That way, the external circle measures exactly 1m, the inner circle 96cm, 9+6=15. 15 consists of 1 and 5. Also the rhombuses’ diameter measures exactly 9,6 cm.

With equal precision and an almost scholarly desire to research, the Leipzig artist SVEN BRAUN deals with the mechanisms of representation. His mounts first appear as framing nothing but a blank piece of paper. Looking at them more closely, however, one realizes the illusion and understands paper and shades as being precisely painted in oil on canvas. These works question the observer’s viewing patterns and force him to look more closely. At the same time, they also address fundamental questions of the production of art. What constitutes an artist’s work? Is art even able to represent anything but itself? Also his canvas paintings being allegedly transparent require the observer to look closely and to get involved with what the painting is all about.

Opening Saturday, September 11th 2010, 6-9 pm

Martin Mertens Munchen
Schleißheimer Str. 26, München
Opening hours: Wednesday – Saturday 12 – 6 pm
free admission

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