Martin Oppel
by Hernan Bas
Martin Oppel From a very early age I’ve been an avid admirer
of books with titles like “Unexplained Wonders” or “Our
Mysterious Planet”. As a child I would spend hours flipping
through pages filled with mummies, fallen meteors, tales of spontaneous
human combustion, Bigfoot, fish raining from the sky, Aztec rituals,
and mosaics composed of human bones. These books were an endless
collection of curiosities designed to inspire the feeling that there
is still so much I don’t know. With these books in hand I became
a world traveler: I knew the secrets of the Amazon and stood on a
blood soaked temple just after a human sacrifice; I was there when
they opened King Tut’s tomb and caught the curse right along
with them. Aside from traveling the world (and time itself) these
books introduced me to a vocabulary of imagery seemingly specific
to the genre. Whether thru mute toned photographs or painted recreations
these images all share a feeling unmistakably recognizable as textbook
versions of the weird. I call it the “aesthetic of wonder” and
to me Martin Oppel creates work that falls directly in this category.
With a mix of sources varying from worship rituals
to the cosmos, Oppel fashions works that illuminate and encourage
curiosity. In
a recent body of work Oppel has focused on the glare of the stage,
the faint silhouettes of a crowd in rapture, blinded by the glow
of spotlights. Looking at these “raptures” I’m
reminded of both religious fever and a devoted fan, really the same
thing… perhaps the crowd at the Roman Coliseum or a Christian
rock concert? While Oppel’s paintings have a timeless feel,
his sculptures tend to mimic the look of relics. Oppel’s sculptures
seem to give weight to the theory that Martians helped construct
our ancient past. Modern materials mix freely with ancient sensibilities,
the result gives the appearance of being both dated and updated at
the same time. Oppels sculptures are like the photo of an ancient
cave drawing that resembles a spacecraft I saw in one of those books.
Oppel plays with notions of modernity and casts them
(literally) in ancient ways. His soil cinderblocks are not simply
a characterization
of nature vs. progress. Instead, they function almost as a pun due
in part that the very “nature” in question is suspect.
When does “natural history” end and all else begin? Perhaps
it is only when an object is placed in a museum dedicated to it that
an object enters the realm of natural. If that is the case, Oppel’s
work seeks to upend the qualifications; a limp traffic cone is petrified
in stone, an ancient statue doubles as a piñata and modern
signage transforms into objects worthy of an ancient bonfire. Martin
Oppel’s works may appear to remark on the difference between
the primal and the modern but what becomes clear is that there is
little distance between the two and the result is wonderfully weird.
Oppel's upcoming exhibition at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin promises
to expand these themes and more. The continued use of the familiar
Miami/construction landscape vocabulary now includes the illusory
physics of light and matter. Within a dialectical strategy, objects
in impossible stances blur the lines between magic and engineering,
and light itself, is pragmatically broken down into its scientific
basics as well as presented for its capacity to mesmerize.
Bernard
Frize
Il a connu
une rétrospective majeure au Musée
d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris en 2003 nommée Aplat. Sa
peinture s'incrit dans la grande tradition de l'abstraction d'après-guerre:
travail sur la surface (utilisation d'une résine rendant les
toiles extrêmement lisses), sur les techniques (participation
de plusieurs "mains" pour réaliser une œuvre),
sur les couleurs (mélange des couleurs sur la brosse puis
au sein du tableau) ainsi que sur les formes tantôt guidées,
tantôt aléatoires.
Il est représenté par
la Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin.
Expositions personnelles
2005
Faces et profils, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris.
Galerie Nächst St. Stephan, Vienne (Autriche).
Euler Tour, Pavistram, Sona... etc, Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery, Miami,
(USA).
2004
Galerie Micheline Swajcer, Antwerp, (Belgique)
Patrick Painter Gallery, Santa Monica, (USA)
Galerie Wilma Lock, St. Gallen, (Suisse)
Source Wikipedia
: http://fr.wikipedia.org |
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