Marcus Eek
Minnesluckor / Black-Outs 28.3.-27.4.2008
27.3.2008
Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary is pleased to be the first Finnish gallery to open the solo exhibition of Swedish painter Marcus Eek (b. 1968), who lives and works in Berlin. Eek’s artistic production can be situated into the core of the new coming of Scandinavian painting. Ten years ago the discussion about the death of painting reached its peak. Self-esteem, sensitivity and force – the characteristics of contemporary painting, have brought this conversation to its end. All these are also crystallized in Eek’s painting. Now the situation for a painter is free.
Eek is aware of the challenges of his instrument: the process of painting is fragile, unsure and difficult, even frustrating for the artist. On the other hand the consciousness of this keeps up the artist’s work, since the instrument must be won each time in new paintings. The constant movement in the thought- and working processes is present in Eek’s unique work.
Eek’s paintings are rich in nuances. They reflect sensitive lyricism and simplicity even at their most expressive levels. Even the painting which is visually abundant is stripped-down of all excessiveness and left as it is.
In his paintings Eek travels in-between abstraction and figurativeness. Some elements may raise associations to familiar things but for him everything is rather abstract material. Figurative elements, which are recognizable, such as animal- and human figures or floral objects, actually express a specific feeling or an atmosphere of the painting itself. The landscape, which has been present in one way or another in Eek’s production so far, is an instrument of expressing invisible things freely. In his case, landscape is not a subject matter as such.
Eek’s complex painting is a “ground”, in which different elements of the artwork come together and communicate. Together these parts form an entity, sometimes even an unlogical one. His works always seem to describe something which is difficult for us viewers to verbalise. Part of the charm of both the painting and viewing process is the ability to emerge things, which are otherwise difficult to recognize.
“The ideal situation would be to make a painting that contains everything and nothing” -Marcus Eek
(in an interview by Kari Immonen, Painting as Presence Exhibition Catalogue, Nifca 2002).
Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary