Markus Linnenbrink: WEREMEMBEREVERYONE
Miles McEnery Gallery, New York
1 April - 8 May, 2021
MARKUS LINNENBRINK
NOPRESENCENOHELLOIGOTAPLANNOWHERETOGO, 2020
Epoxy resin and pigments on wood
Diptych, 88 x 107 3/4 inches , 223.5 x 273.7 cm
© Markus Linnenbrink, Courtesy Miles McEnery Gallery
MILES McENERY GALLERY is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by MARKUS LINNENBRINK. WEREMEMBEREVERYONE is the artist’s fifth solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by Cat Kron.
Over the course of his thirty-year career, the German-born, Brooklyn-based artist’s paintings have taken form primarily in three distinct processes, which he identifies as drips, drills, and reverses. The genesis of the works developed from the artist’s formative question: “What if you take your will out of the equation and just pay attention to process?” Markus Linnenbrink’s skillfully engineered paintings derive from the artist’s exploration of color with attention to the behavior of material.
Markus Linnenbrink blends a myriad of pigments with epoxy resin to create a magnificent formation of colors. The drip process, demonstrated in paintings such as, NOPRESENCENOHELLOIGOTAPLANNOWHERETOGO, takes place when the artist pours cups of pigment from the top of the canvas allowing for ribbons of color to be interspersed on the surface. The artist repurposes accumulated layers of resin from the drip paintings to form his drills, as seen in immersive works like EXPLAINMYHEART. Dense with evidence of time and labor, Markus Linnenbrink drills into the surface to reveal layers of contrasting, saturated color.
The artist’s most recent endeavor, which also takes painting to new limits sculpturally and coloristically, are his reverses. “Linnenbrink’s reverses take the drills’ use of excavation as a means of producing surprising revelations but instead invert it. For these works, which are classified as paintings but which dip and jut out from the wall at varying points like topographical elevation maps, the artist creates a variegated vinyl mold,” explains Kron.
WEREMEMBEREVERYONE encompasses Linnenbrink’s ongoing investigation into color, material, time, and, his quest for spontaneity. “In all three processes, there is an element of chance that sits in tension with the works’ anti-figurative, gestural appearance.”
MARKUS LINNENBRINK (b. Dortmund, Germany in 1961) attended Gesamthochschule in Kassel, Germany and the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, Germany.
Recent solo exhibitions include “IWANNABEWHEREYOUARE,” Taubert Contemporary, Berlin, Germany; “SLEEPWALKPARADISE,” Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA; “WHOLEWIDEWORLDWONDERFUL,” Galería Max Estrella, Madrid, Spain; “LETMETELLYOUWHATTHERIVERSGONNADO,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; “THEREAINTNOEASYWAYOUT,” Maurizio Caldirola, Monza, Italy; “HOWCANISLEEPWITHROCKSINMYBED,” Ameringer | McEnery |Yohe, New York, NY; “ WHENTHEPASTWASPRESENTSOWILLBENOW,” Taubert Contemporary, Berlin, Germany; “ THEFIRSTISCRAZYANDTHESECONDISNUTS,” Wasserman Projects, Detroit, MI; “ THEGRASSISALWAYSGREENER,” Galería Max Estrella, Madrid, Spain; “THERIDENEVERENDS,” Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Philadelphia, PA; “day after day it reappears,” Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA and “so here is what you gonna do,” ft-contemporary, Berlin, Germany.
Recent group exhibitions include “Farbanstöße. Farbe in der neueren Kunst,” Kunstsammlung der Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Situation Kunst (für Max Imdahl), Bochum, Germany; “Water Reverie,” Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; “The Responsive Eye Revisited: Then, Now, and In-Between,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, N Y; “Abstraction& Architecture, (Days of Architecture),” Strasbourg, France; “Belief in Giants,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, N Y; “abstract remix,” New Art Projects, London, United Kingdom; “Deck Voyage,” (curated by Necmi Sönmez), Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; “Revisiones,” Galeria Impakto, Lima, Peru; “Off The Wall!” (curated by Harriet Zilch), Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Germany; “Selections of the Cleve Carney Collection” (curated by Barbara Wiesen), Cleve Carney Art Gallery, McAninch Arts Center, Glen Ellyn, IL; “3+4 B/W,” Taubert-Contemporary, Berlin, Germany; “Local Color,” San José Museum of Art, San José, CA and “Roy G Biv,” Waterhouse & Dodd Gallery, New York, NY; among others.
His work is included in the permanent collections of Ministry of Culture, The Hague, The Netherlands; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; San José Museum of Art, San José, CA; and Hammer Museum, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; among others. In 2016, Markus Linnenbrink completed two permanent public installations: an outdoor wallpainting at SLS Brickell Hotel and Residences, Miami, FL, and a site-specific, large-scale painting for the lobby of 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY.
Markus Linnenbrink lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
MILES McENERY GALLERY
525 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
