For his first exhibition at the "Halle am Wasser", Markus Putze has created a large-scale wall installation made of a three-part wall drawing and appliquéed watercolours. His wall drawings display elements of nature, people - mostly women - and writing in the form of quotes or neologisms.
The wall drawings are composed in such a way that they link the whole exhibition space together. In the foyer, on the opposite wall, a naked female figure, viewed from behind, is the first thing to greet the viewer. She leads the visitor inside the gallery with her gaze, which seems to pass through the wall. Past the sunken, pacing woman, one's gaze falls on the central section of the wall drawing towards the left of the main room. Here, Markus Putze unfolds a motivic composition of trees, figures, nets and battered panes. Turning back, the viewer discovers the over-sized silhouette of a standing woman in the corner. She is turned in the direction of the window, away from the entrance wall. Lost in herself, she stares meaningfully into space.
Forests give way to faces or spider webs, which in turn are not just webs, but broken panes. It is exactly because of all this complexity that Markus Putze's pictures are very ambivalent compositions, rich in contrast. He links pictures and writing, painting and drawing, paints figuratively and abstractly, lightly and darkly, in colour and in black and white, pornographic motifs contrast with motifs from classical painting. This extremely complex composition, which changes from positive to negative forms, in which forests become nets and then women again, continues in the watercolours integrated into the drawings. Acting as windows in the installation, the watercolours open up the pictorial space into visual worlds which are ever more deeply interwoven with each other.
Perhaps even more than that: we see ourselves confronted with an unreal, mysterious world, one of subliminal reality which is otherwise not allowed direct entry to our everyday lives. The pane of glass, sometimes a protective entity, breaks before our eyes. On top of this, this craquelure increasingly creates the impression of a cracked, rough screen.
How many blurred, incomprehensible, interwoven impressions, ones which lead us around the whole room and pull us into Markus Putze's visual world, can we stand before we long to escape the virtual excessive demands? "Last exit", the subtitle of the exhibition, rescues us with a clue. Because often, to reach an emergency exit, one has to first smash a pane of glass. Markus Putze describes the world to us in all its complexity. In its beauty and diversity, but also in its fury and violence. Among all the artfully composed details such as landscapes, bodies and human faces, a Modern Romantic flashes up time and time again, with her quiet longing for unity in the complexity of the whole.
"Ästhetik der Existenz (last exit)" establishes a connection with his last exhibition which took place as part of the Art Summer in Hellerau (Dresden). The venue was the Festspielhaus, over whose entrance the writing „Ästhetik der Existenz" was emblazoned. Alongside this exhibition, Putze's work was most recently on display at the Internationalen Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, from which the artist received a grant. Markus Putze studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Nuremberg from 1998-2004, in a class taught by Prof. Christine Colditz. He lives and works in Nuremberg.
2009 „Ästhetik der Existenz (last exit)“, Jarmuschek+Partner, Berlin. „last exit”, Art Summer Hellerau, Dresden. „we need not be afraid, do we?” , Internat. Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, Bamberg
2008 the owls are not what they seem , Galerie Oechsner, Nuremberg. black gravity , Neuer Kunstverein Giessen
2007 amplifier3831 , Jarmuschek+Partner, Berlin
2006 descent , Zumikon lounge, Nuremberg (catalogue). slower darling slower . Preview Berlin , Jarmuschek+Partner, Berlin
