Category: Michael Markwick

Serious Play

20. April – 2. Juni 2018
LUCY TEASDALE, MICHAEL MARKWICK

Skulptur und Malerei
Eröffnung: Do, 19. April, 18 – 21 Uhr
geöffnet: Di bis Sa 12 – 18 Uhr

Galerie Born, Berlin
galerie-born.de
Potsdamer Str. 58, 10785 Berlin

Michael Markwick”Most of Markwick’s pictures develop out of innumerable layers and over-painting. To accentuate the physical structure of the paint, he sometimes mixes sand into it or cuts it away with razor blades and spatulas. Markwick understands the painting process as both a dialogue and conflict between colour, form and narrative motifs such as elements of landscapes. In his current work hints emerge of human figures, a flower or a paper kite.

In titles such as Sailor on the Styx (2018) or Clattering Bones of a Flower (2018) the artist has started to emphasize traces of bones, skulls or skeletons, which had continually appeared spontaneously in older works during the painting process and in this way emphasised the latent confrontation with death and mortality.

A new, brighter state of pictorial composition has created room for this. Until 2015 Markwick was inspired primarily by expressionist influences – by Joan Mitchell, Willem de Kooning or the CoBrA group. Since making a journey to see the work of Piero della Francesca and frescoes of the early Italian Renaissance, you can see a greater lightness in his paintings. This lightness is characterised by brighter colours, more open spaces and stronger graphically nuanced forms.

Nevertheless the pictorial space is still  wrought with discords. In this way Markwick keeps all the elements active and vibrant and stimulates the gaze of the viewer. The viewer’s gaze is pushed away  from the finely shaded or swirled paint, zooms into details with an enormous impression of depth or, as in The Slide (2017) is sucked into a lead-dark chasm. In Poet Climbing out of the Earth (2017) a spring-like lyricism seems to conquer the weightiness, while in Bird Waiting for Storm (2018) a cascade of light rebels against the stone grey shadows that threaten to swallow up all other colours.”

Above quote from exhibition text.

Dr. Karin Schulze