In his immersive, abstract paintings, London-based artist Markus Amm investigates the perception of time in art, whether in the process of creating an artwork or viewing it.
Read MoreBorn in Stuttgart, Amm studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (1995) and the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (1999).
Ranging from intimately sized to larger scale canvases, Markus Amm's untitled paintings typically radiate a sense of luminosity in their pools of colour, which are created by pouring paint onto gesso board.
Amm begins by preparing his colours—using pigments, oil, thinner, and binding agents—and pouring thinned paint over a flat surface on the floor. Layers of paint are added onto the board over prolonged periods of time, which can take months. The very act of creating the painting, however, is relatively quick and intuitive, resembling what the artist has described as 'a tennis game between me, my ideas, and the material.'
Many of Amm's paintings appear smooth, in which colours and forms seamlessly blend together. In an untitled canvas from 2017, rays of fuchsia pink locked into the upper left corner of the painting quickly transform into a pool of deep purple.
Yet, Amm's paintings can also be more geometric with defined shapes, as with his earlier paintings from 2006, which feature rectangular shapes with jagged edges against monochrome backgrounds.
Often luminous in their gradation of hues, the colours in Amm's paintings evoke sensations or landscapes. In a 2020 painting shown at Part One, his solo exhibition at London's Herald St in 2021, a central band of soft pink seemingly emanates light against the shadows of darker purple on its sides. In another canvas from the same year, a mesmerising composition of colours emerge from a cloud of luminous green and a black, mound-like shape underneath it, with a sliver of red sandwiched between them.
Part One also included several paintings with hard-edged shapes against a milky white background. In one canvas, a rough triangle is formed by bright red, yellow, and blue, with a short stub of orange on the top, while in another, the artist has used his fingers to make quick strokes of colour in small groups across the canvas.
Markus Amm's paintings have been shown in solo and group exhibitions internationally.
Solo exhibitions include Markus Amm, Gallery Baton, Seoul (2022); Part One, Herald St, London (2021); Markus Amm, David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (2018); Markus Amm, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2017); Markus Amm, Sammlung Lenikus, Vienna (2015); Markus Amm, Galerie Karin Günther, Hamburg (2012).
Group exhibitions include Spring, Fondation Thalie, Brussels (2021); A Little After The Millennium, Gallery Baton, Seoul (2020); La Cabale du cheval Pégase, Hard Hat, Geneva (2017); Variations: Conversations In And Around Abstract Painting, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2014); Mind is Outer Space, Casey Kaplan, New York (2013); Actual Fact / Factual Fact, Märkisches Museum Witten, Germany (2011).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2022
