Opening: 12.05.2022, 18:00-21:00
Exhibition: 13.05.–09.07.2022


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In Markus Amm’s paintings, colours spread and ooze from the surface. On smaller works the artist, who is also a photographer, brings out tones and intensities. In his paintings, there are no lines but, as in photography, colour chemistry effects that reveal contours through contrast. The surface, made extremely smooth by accumulating numerous layers of preparation, becomes saturated with pigments. The artist is the attentive observer of what it will reveal little by little. The paintings have an architectural flair that is enhanced by their reinforced structure, thus becoming fascinating windows.

Markus Amm continues to believe that painting can be a window, a breakthrough, a potential space. He perfectly knows the history of painting and the parallel history of photography which suggests/claims the capture of reality. It is none of this that his painting displays. Even if the impression of vertigo they produce is like an infinite extension of Leonardo’s sfumato effects, his works are totally contemporary. They act as a critique of the white cube as a non-space. His painting breaks through the walls and perforates the conventions. The spectator must admit her/his attraction and at the same time see her/his fascination thwarted.

For if Markus Amm’s works are spaces of projection, they are yet indeterminate. He structures spaces that are beyond us. His work takes us into a vaporous and fuzzy dimension. We lose our ability to focus. We float in a colourful range that reflects only our own visions. The painter becomes the one who can still open new free spaces.

With our technological means, we are forced to photographic sharpness. All the images we produce with our phones are legible and clear. They are so much so that we know that they combine directly with databases including other quasi-identical ones. The world has become a grid of precise visions. All its reflections are set up and assembled. Our vision is the one we share with others. Photography becomes a collective practice. There is no more soft-focus in our images, they all have the same taste.

Almost paradoxically, painting proposes a space so referenced that it becomes open again. Bypassing the expected expression of a mastered will, Markus Amm plays with a lack of surface effect to tame a loss of focus. He digs tunnels of light behind a smooth and porous screen. Each canvas becomes an experience. He will then choose some of them to invite us to a walk with numerous possible vantage points. But we are in a garden. Nothing is left to chance. So that our glance plunges into the paintings the artist must play with meticulousness and attention. His works become the objects of our desires and dreams. Like eccentric mirrors, Markus Amm’s works reflect images of our memory as much as they reveal the strong expression of our freedom.

Samuel Gross