manor Grunewald
11/06/1985

The young artist MG makes paintings and studies, such as drawings and collages. He uses scribbles and found material, elements he filters and processes in a particular way. The artist uses an expressive logic which always results in strange constellations. In his hybrid images an idea and an experiment are knitted together in a very personal way. They do not immediately want to be understood. As an observer you are invited to use your own imagination to cross the associative borders.

MG is, wether or not consciously, always looking for contrasts. In his studies he mixes figures with undefinable shapes, balancing between image and stain, sign and meaning. The tension he creates this way makes his work tangible for the viewer. In Eye for an eye (2007) he connect a mans and a womans eyes with lines and separates the head from the torso with an ellipse. Due to this minor intervention the artist not only arises questions about the characters and their relation, he emphasises the signal of the images as well.To do so, he uses minimal, abstract forms which reappear as patterns throughout his work: stripes, dots, facets, molecules... It shows that they always seem to guide the senses: eyes or mouths, a smile or a face are made harmless. Manors images allude to an oppressive aspect of human communication. And at the same time they are searching for expressiveness on the visual aspect.

His paintings show the same dedication, although MG does not stick to one artistic style. Some images have a rough touch to them, do not include characters, whereas others betray his love for the unusual. The deal shows a transaction between creatures in a fairy-tale atmosphere: the object of exchange is a chain of sausages, an element that catches the eye for its strange, formal property. The attraction of the painting Regular John lies within an animal growth of hair which overruns the portraid figure. In stead of something recognizable, these images present a thing which draws the attention and which has a suggestive power to it. MG is an authentic contemporary artist who grafts onto moving images which are a result of his investigation: alienation and permutation of bodies, images and shapes.

For Extraordinary facts... (2008) the artist replaced parts of a face by coloured dots. His fascination for the abstract, for patterns and moving images such as bark, brick, molecules and so on, form an important key to his work. Not ony do these elements introduce and ambiguity between demolition and growth, construction and demolition. Moreover, they function as a kind of noise in the image, which causes a short circuit on the visual and intellectual level. As such he illustrates the mobility of every meaning, which always stays incomplete or partly abstract to the individual. In an image, he always questions the notion of surface and depth, of forefront and backfront. He confronts the spectator with unfinished, incomplete images which seem to be stuck in a state between defined and undefined, beauty and noise. But at the same time they tackle the most elementary problem of the individual.

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