Marc Bauer
24 Mar - 14 Apr 2012
© Marc Bauer
«Der Sammler (Die Giraffe)», 2012
Lithographic crayon on wall
85 x 135 cm ( 33,5 x 53,1 inch )
Dimensions approx./ Dimensions variable
«Der Sammler (Die Giraffe)», 2012
Lithographic crayon on wall
85 x 135 cm ( 33,5 x 53,1 inch )
Dimensions approx./ Dimensions variable
Le Grand Relay: Lap#2:
MARC BAUER
Der Sammler
24 March - 14 April 2012
We are very pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Marc Bauer (*1975, Geneva, lives in Berlin, DE) on the occasion of lap 2# of our Grand Relay Series* of exhibitions, screenings and performances.
A central theme to Marc Bauer‘s drawings, installations and wall papers is his confrontation with our relationship to memory. As is well-known, memorizing happens in various ways and is always subjectively baised. So called historical moments mostly are defined to be such only afterwards and are then charged with specific contents.
The motifs in Marc Bauer‘s drawings often refer to such historical moments, or with film and literature relating to and overlapping with such. In many cases the works also contain personal recordings and memories.
In his current exhibition „Der Sammler“, Marc Bauer presents a series of new drawings on paper as well as directly onto the walls of the gallery space. Based on a historical situation they trace a frightening and uncanny dimension of collecting (and of „the collector“) which at the same time questions issues of control and power, but also of memory and how through the capability of collecting a specific reality can be shaped.
The drawing‘s motifs are based on photographs of Paris interiors during the time of France‘s Nazi occupation at the beginning of the 1940ies. While at first glance they appear innocent and thoroughly decorative, the drawings‘ details reveal a incoherency. Marc Bauer here points at how furniture and art originating from apartments of deported Jews was displayed in specific locations in the city for officers of the German army to help themselves for their individual demands. Among others, also items defined by the Nazis as ‚Entartete Kunst‘ (‚Degenerate Art‘) appears in those exhibition spaces.
The drawings here definitely attribute a very drastic and morbid to ‚The Collector‘. The enrichment and extermination that form the basis for these collections, however, experiences only subliminal identification. The drawings themselves emphasize on a passed situation that one is tempted to call idyllic, pretty or possibly transcient. Drawing techniques that vary from blurring to precision almost seem to capture and visualize the past air.
As much ambiguities - in contrast to ideologies- Marc Bauer‘s oeuvre contains, it always and with great force declares that one power of art itself lies in its ability to conceptualize reality.
Art thus becomes larger than one‘s self- and larger than the collector.
MARC BAUER
Der Sammler
24 March - 14 April 2012
We are very pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Marc Bauer (*1975, Geneva, lives in Berlin, DE) on the occasion of lap 2# of our Grand Relay Series* of exhibitions, screenings and performances.
A central theme to Marc Bauer‘s drawings, installations and wall papers is his confrontation with our relationship to memory. As is well-known, memorizing happens in various ways and is always subjectively baised. So called historical moments mostly are defined to be such only afterwards and are then charged with specific contents.
The motifs in Marc Bauer‘s drawings often refer to such historical moments, or with film and literature relating to and overlapping with such. In many cases the works also contain personal recordings and memories.
In his current exhibition „Der Sammler“, Marc Bauer presents a series of new drawings on paper as well as directly onto the walls of the gallery space. Based on a historical situation they trace a frightening and uncanny dimension of collecting (and of „the collector“) which at the same time questions issues of control and power, but also of memory and how through the capability of collecting a specific reality can be shaped.
The drawing‘s motifs are based on photographs of Paris interiors during the time of France‘s Nazi occupation at the beginning of the 1940ies. While at first glance they appear innocent and thoroughly decorative, the drawings‘ details reveal a incoherency. Marc Bauer here points at how furniture and art originating from apartments of deported Jews was displayed in specific locations in the city for officers of the German army to help themselves for their individual demands. Among others, also items defined by the Nazis as ‚Entartete Kunst‘ (‚Degenerate Art‘) appears in those exhibition spaces.
The drawings here definitely attribute a very drastic and morbid to ‚The Collector‘. The enrichment and extermination that form the basis for these collections, however, experiences only subliminal identification. The drawings themselves emphasize on a passed situation that one is tempted to call idyllic, pretty or possibly transcient. Drawing techniques that vary from blurring to precision almost seem to capture and visualize the past air.
As much ambiguities - in contrast to ideologies- Marc Bauer‘s oeuvre contains, it always and with great force declares that one power of art itself lies in its ability to conceptualize reality.
Art thus becomes larger than one‘s self- and larger than the collector.