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until 19.12. | #2895ARTatBerlin | Galerie Martin Mertens shows from 31st October 2020 the exhibition INEINANDERSITZEN AUSEINANDERSETZEN with works by the arist Pius Fox.
After the participation in the painting exhibition “Jetzt – junge Malerei in Deutschland”, which was shown in the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, Museum Chemnitz, Museum Wiesbaden and the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, we are looking forward to an exhibition with new works by Pius Fox.
Figurative and figure-related motifs will reappear at Fox – as they have since his studies. They are based on photographs which he took himself and which have fascinated and inspired him for many years. To bring these motifs onto the canvas or paper, he sometimes uses a projector in his new works. Throughout his work, Fox always makes it clear that his abstract work is largely based on objects and photographs, and that it takes up forms and structures that are actually present.
These representational forms are the reason for Fox to deal anew with the question of how to construct pictures, how drawing, underpainting, oil paint, intermediate varnish, glaze and paste-like application of paint work together and create colour depth. The basic question he pursues is how the path from the idea to the picture is made – how certain desired effects can be technically realised.
In this process, egg tempera has recently become important for Fox. This is a technique that is historically much older than oil painting and which he uses in many of his paintings as a background in light/dark contrasts before it is then overlaid by oil and other materials. This enables him to work in several layers and thus to achieve greater depth of colour without the painting layer becoming too pastose. Fox describes how difficult it is to decide at which stage of his work to change to oil colour and when he allows the oil colour to give rise to immediate spontaneous decisions which then form a living surface.
For this exhibition, Fox has also forced himself to leave his traditional small format of less than 30 cm. in which he can move with great confidence and which has made his work known worldwide, and to consciously face medium and larger formats in order to achieve the same intensity and density as in the small format.
Pius Fox
For Pius, the somewhat unwieldy title of this exhibition was the result of various considerations. First of all, the Corona’s conditional retreat into the private sphere has meant for him not only a family life, but also an intensive examination of his own work and art historical positions such as Picasso and Matisse. He alludes to the concept of “setting”, which can be observed in Picasso’s work in particular, in that lines and strokes can only be set in this one precise form in order to enable the corresponding meaning of the content of the depicted work. The enormous certainty with which Picasso or even Matisse could set strokes which then fill with meaning fascinates him again and again. The examination in the sense of disassembling and reassembling also plays a part and describes a principle of his work.
Vernissage: Saturday, 31 October 2020, from 1:00 – 6:00 pm
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 31 October – Saturday, 19 December 2020
To the Gallery
Exhibition Pius Fox – Galerie Martin Mertens | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
