Patrick Heide Contemporary Art is delighted to present a new solo exhibition featuring the works ofMartin Assig entitled Promise.
Martin Assig was born in 1959 in Schwelm, Germany and studied at the University of Arts in Berlin. Assig's artistic cosmos circles invariably around the human being, asking essential questions about our existence and its transcendental manifestations. Assig enquires about the dichotomy between life and death, about loving and longing, suffering and loss, all basic human fates and emotions. As art historian Ullrich writes in the exhibition catalogue of Assig's extensive retrospective at Museum Kuppersmühle in Duisburg last year: 'The pictorial works offer themselves as counterparts and companions for inner monologues, as instigators for internal conversations'.
Assig is less of a contemporary artist in a topical sense, the subjects he raises are fundamental and enduring, not current socio-political ones. Assig could be seen in a tradition of religious or mythological image making with the aim to reach metaphysical realms though the creative process.And though Assigs compositions tempt us with colourful iconography, the message is not religious and does not spare us from our darker sides. Assig touches the innermost of our feelings, he ventures into realms humans often are fearful to explore or express. In his epic series St Paul, an homage toPaul Klee, Assig, like Klee, uses text to communicate another level of understanding. The words can elevate the visual impact, but also be enrichingly out of sync with the external and internal image depicted. St Paul was started in 2009, comprises more than 1000 drawings and was partly shown at the museum Boijmans von Beuningen in Rotterdam in 2016. The cycle chimes with Assig's personal life of illness and salvation, of existentialist questions and musings, of life and art related thoughts and penchants. The viewer gets the impression that the artist has to reaffirm through his art that he is still alive.
The London exhibition is entitled Promise and strikes a more positive tone than the core of Assig's St Paul series. The main group of drawings on display entitled Seelen, souls, references the metaphysical part of our existence as well as a reflection of Assig's own soul, alluding to us humans as individuals in their spiritual uniqueness. Most works are devoid of text, the imagery translates mainly visual and more intuitively. In Seelen Assig returns to cut outs, which he had worked with in 1999 for the floor piece Erzählung am Boden, making the series more playful simply thanks to the nature of the cut and paste technique. However, Seelen also expresses perennial dilemmas and desires, as timeless as Assig's media, wax and encaustic, dating back to ancient Egypt. Combined with the title Promise, a glimmer of hope emerges and Seelen could conjure a trajectory to a brighter future.
Today Assig's work can be found in The Bundeskunstsammlung Federal Art Collection of Germany, The Weserburg Museum of Modern Art in Bremen Germany and The Museum of Modern Art in NewYork among others. The artist currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Press release courtesy Patrick Heide Contemporary Art.
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