Markues
Artist Statement
I will show four drawings from the series 'The Troubled Waters of Ethnic Heritage'. They have been on display at Kunstverein Braunschweig in 2020 and Ludwig Forum Aachen in 2021 but did not make their debut in Berlin. I'll install a petit version of 'Prima Quallerina' in the former GDR Watchtower: Disemboweled washing machines lie on the floor of the exhibition space like shipwrecks. Robbed of their domesticity and function, their reinforced side panels, perforations, and apertures stand out as meaningless decorations. On these wrecks, watercolors have settled like polyps. Markues proposes a formal view of these objects and the drawings upon them, which seem as if they could extend in all directions, liquefying before the viewer’s very eyes, flowing beyond the edges of the paper, and spilling over the washing machines.
Jellyfish are exposed to the currents of the sea and have little ability to determine their direction. Like the medusas that a jellyfish polyp forms by dividing itself into new segments, the ornaments in Markues’s watercolor series The Troubled Waters of Ethnic Heritage are separated from their origins. The forms in the drawings are borrowed from Westerwald and Bolesławiec pottery, as well as from carpets, curtains, wallpaper, and playing cards, superimposed in translucent layers like washed-out ceramic glazes in pale blue, violet, gray, and green tones. Markues directs the viewer’s attention to the ornamental, transforming its supposed uselessness into a method of painterly questioning. The works resist clearly defined stylistic or geographical determinations, but they are reminiscent of the decorations found on functional objects in working class environments, which are often chosen out of necessity rather than considerations of design. While individual decorations may have once been symbols of distinction, they are now erratically accumulated symbols without status.