Martin Schnur „#Mirrored“

Which questions does contemporary painting evoke for the landscape or the figure? What can and must painting achieve when photography becomes its natural model today? Especially when photography also generates new ways of dealing with the figure and the landscape. "Life is a prisoner of its representation," wrote the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi, which would not reveal anything of the "real" truth.

But this is precisely where painting comes in. It does not intend to represent life in its entirety. Instead, it only takes it as a starting point to conduct completely different dialogues on the canvas. At best, it operates along the lines of nature, generating new realities in the play of autonomous color surfaces, light spaces, and the immanent materiality of color itself. It has a "special capacity to sensually accomplish a grasping of the incomprehensible," as the painter Markus Lüpertz emphasized in a conversation with the philosopher Heinrich Hell. It is part of the characteristic of painting, according to Lüpertz, that it always retains something mysterious - and this is also true for Martin Schnur's paintings. There is something mysterious about his paintings. He neither wants to depict the world nor explain it, but dwells where the quiet intermediate tones of reality become visible.
The solo exhibition at Hangar-7 presents both a new series of works by the artist and some paintings from recent years. The unifying element is the mirror or the reflection itself, as it is also achieved, for example, by a smooth water surface. A motif that Martin Schnur has used for many years as a central element in his paintings.

Author: Silvie Aigne