PRESSRELEASE

Markus Linnenbrink - LISTENALLTHEWAYTHROUGH

April, 30th 2010 – July, 3rd 2010

Whether Markus Linnenbrink is employing traditional supports or painting directly on the wall, ceiling or floor as he does in his site-specific works, present always is the joy of color and process. For this artist, the pleasures of obsession and repetition seem to be a sufficient reward. Uncertainty about the artist’s measure or conscious intent evolved into a kind of content with a fascination of its own. However, the more you look at his paintings, the less their profusion of detail matters. Instead, they seem to implode to a conceptual posture that implies the futility of careful looking.

Spontaneity is evident in almost every aspect of the artist’s work: the "drill“ paintings that emerge after the artist has excavated the accumulation of colorful layers of resin and the resin “drip” paintings where he controls the placement of color in the span of the painting, but not is final destination. Historically these linear works were tighter, fully concealing their underlying surface. Now, Linnenbrink has opened them with sparser compositions and translucent colors, barely concealing the carefully airbrushed surfaces or personal photographs underneath that provide both contrast and content to the striations that sit atop.

His sculptures have opened as well, not just in their shift from opaque to translucent but in the very form itself. What was usually confined within strictly perpendicular lines has now morphed into knob-like orifices that disrupt the boxy form or changed completely to become a zig-zag mountain range, its shape determined not by the artist but by gravity itself. Using industrial-grade sheeting, Linnenbrink creates loose armatures to support the pigmented epoxy that he layers into the mold. Here the artist reveals his sense of play, not only through his adventurous use of color, but also with the tiny objects that peek out from the inside.

Similarly, Linnenbrink applies this idea to a new series of paintings where he builds the surface in a loose mold and then applies it to the support. These pieces fully demonstrate Linnenbrink’s ability to bring the sculptural to painting and painting to sculpture.

Markus Linnenbrink lives and works in New York, USA.