MARCO REICHERT | IN COMPARISON

About

The show’s title, IN COMPARISON, is a tribute to the film of the same name by the director Harun Farocki (1944-2014), in which, through the production of bricks, an inquiry is undertaken into the automation of work both in rural societies, such as the African communities where bricks are handmade, and in the industrial ones typical of the West where the work is undertaken by machines.

In fact, Reichert’s stylistic research makes a comparison between two aspects: on the one hand is a classical pictorial methodology linked to materials and making in a traditional way. On the other hand there is an overtly technical-digital component that, through the construction of such “homemade tools” as robot designers made by the artist himself, creates a strong union with contemporary society, a society that is increasingly dominated by mechanical tools and computers.

In an osmotic relationship with machines that he himself has devised and assembled, Reichert acts on the surfaces of his pictures and traces out drawings and abstract, linear, fluid and organic fields of colour. This is a creative process in which the device becomes the means for reaching visual results that would not be possible otherwise. In fact the artist becomes one with his devices: his fingers run over the touchscreen, and his hand controls a joystick in search of innovative and surprising marks and structures.

The large-scale canvases on show highlight the dichotomy of a dialogue between spontaneous touches of ink or acrylic, the use of a spray, and brushstrokes freely chosen by the artist, and more geometrical and calculated forms, with regular rhythms and lines that inhabit the work’s surface and that seem almost mechanical because they were obtained through the use of digital media.

This same interest has led to a special project specifically undertaken by the artist for this show. This is a limited series of eight works on paper, each different from the other, created by Reichert with the use of paper clay, a mixture of clay and cellulose fibres that, once again, connects the digital world to the physicality and corporeity of material.

Marco Reichert (Berlin, 1979) lives and works in Berlin. He studied painting at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee, Berlin, and information technology at Humboldt University, also in Berlin. He has taken part in solo and group shows in such prestigious international institutes and galleries as the Kunstverein Weinheim, Collection Baumgärtner, Weinheim (2014); Herbert-Gerisch Stiftung, Neumünster (2014); Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlino (2011); Freies Museum Berlin, Berlin (2010); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2009), and many others.