Martin Assig
Mystères
September 12th –october 20th 2009
Martin Assig was born in 1959 in Schwelm, Germany.
He lives and works in Berlin and Brädikow.
Martin Assig has always worked with pigments and wax.
The wax, melted with the pigments or applied in thin layers, enhances the colours and gives the piece, either on canvas or wood, a particular light. On paper the wax favours a transparency effect suggesting an impression of immanence.
Martin Assig’s world is figurative: women’s dresses with delicate clothing, the bodies finely sketched behind the finery, headless bodies that seem filled with life, wrapped in a particular energy of which the bodies seem to be the captor. These are the main themes of this exhibition.
There is in Martin Assig’s work a great strength stressed even more by the harmony of the colours and sometimes a faint nostalgia suggested by an oriental atmosphere.
Martin Assig wants to evoke inner life and the development of his personal thoughts.
Hence words often entering his paintings or works on paper: serious words, invented words, words of an ancient or foreign language, sayings, quotes (Cendrars, Godard) some can have a visual impact more than a double meaning others can relate to an inner world where a desire to come back to the essential can portray life’s mysticism.
Lilith (here after) evokes the first woman, the one before Eve according to the Genesis. She is painted here without a head and dressed in a long white and pale blue dress “in the manner of Velasquez” on which a motif of the Virgin Mary is depicted. She wears a short jacket with long sleeves ornate of skulls; also represented on the front of this jacket is a monastery’s coat of arms and at the tip of the sleeves hangs a sort of stole.
Public exhibitions (selection) :
1993 Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie, Dessau 1994 Akademie der Künste, Berlin
1996 Saarlandmuseum, Saarbrücken; Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen,
Magdeburg; Kunsthalle zu Kiel 1997 Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Gent
2000 Hamburger Kunsthalle 2001 »Envoltura«, Museo National Centro de Arte
Reina Sofia, Madrid 2002 »Erzählungen am Boden«, Neues Museum Weserburg,
Bremen 2009 »La Presa/Die Beute«, Centro de Arte Caja de Burgos CAB