Marlon Wobst

 

German, 1980

lives and works in Berlin

 

 

CLICK HERE for an artist's statement and price information. (.PDF)

 

>> curatorial text

 

Click on the images to enlarge.

 

TGIF, OMFG, LMAO, ROFL

 

'For me, these acronyms represent the doctrines which surreptitiously guide our society. As such it seems only logical to portray them as tattoos on my knuckles, taking after Reverend Harry Powell in “The Night Of The Hunter”. While Powell chose the classic ‘LOVE’ and ‘HATE’ as allegories of the primordial struggle between good and evil, the four contemporary acronyms I have used are superficial, glib, pre-fab reactions to everything around me. We live for the immediate, we forget about anything beyond this instant, eternity doesn’t exist. Thank God It’s Friday has become the motto of an entire generation of bored employees.

 

As a classical painter I wanted to achieve maximum luminosity with the few layers of highly contrasting colour in these lithographs. In my work I process generally everything that I encounter in my surroundings but keeping content simple is important to me. Overly complex or pretentious stories distract from the painting itself; or from the printing, in this case.

 

Repetition is common in my work and certain elements appear in multiple images; sometimes entire images can be found in other paintings. The four nearly identical hands in these lithographs have developed from drawings and paintings that also deal, in their own way, with severed hands and with ‘that’ which might get tattooed on knuckles.'

 

 

- Marlon Wobst

 

Translation: Sarah Dudley