The Nomads Square
A Quarantine Diary
The conceptual and non-representational series The Nomads Square invites you to a self-engendering aesthetic discovery. As with other series, the artist prefers a given format (30 x 30 cm) and employs oil paint which is applied to the canvas in massive layers using a spatula or similar tools. New work is created each day without following a preconceived “protocol”. In this way, individual images seem to diverge in development, yet others claim spontaneous eruptions to become a singular existence. There is a constant progression lying in condensing, digging, experimenting and dissolving.
The manner of work is similar to that of a calligrapher. In quick succession, stages of work and decisions are guided intuitively, as well as completely rejected or newly created. The tendency towards virtuosity - in the sense of Asian mastery - merges with the lifestyle of the nomads of Mongolia.
The artist has lived and experienced nomadic culture in numerous trips and projects in the Mongolian steppes. Just as nomads do not actually travel to “foreign” land, but “travel” on “their” earth, with which they feel connected, so the canvas here offers an entrance to an infinite variation of introspection of the smallest perceptible units. Nomadic life endures. It moves on and leaves what is. Many terms used today such as holism, sustainability, species-appropriate husbandry, climate-friendly, management of waste prevention etc. are not new in the nomadic perspective but rather parameters of natural life. Here, the artist takes the canvas as an example of a changing location.
Similar to the mandala The Infinite City, which is visualized as a perfect square arrangement and symbol of the world with the meditator above the head, the artist uses the canvas as a daily mirror to understand the world. The artist breaks free from convention and appropriates some of the most advanced technical components from the latest “revolution” in arts. With these new transformational enabling tools in painting, along with the traditional techniques from art, science, philosophy, poetry and industriy, the artist articulates and facilitates his deeply personal exploration into the fundamental questions of the human condition. During the process, he erases the gap between modernity and tradition, reality and unreality, life and substance, between individuals, and even the essential difference between humanity and other forms of life.
Marc`s painting practice may contribute to this sensitivity to the “unexpected” state, which makes him often stop before the changes of daily things and rethink the habits and laws in his own consciousness and behavior. Together with other similar events, “accident” promotes his repeated examination of the substance and functionality of painting materials, and furthermore makes him interact with a certain painting tradition.
Consistent, Marc prefers to find the traces of painting from real life itself. Following this path, he tried to combine freely and “accidentally” these simple structures and materials in an atypical way, and treat the material properties from a daily perspective, emphasizing the function and potential carried by the structure itself, or spread, reinforce, wrap, tighten, so that the structure upon the surface coat amid the colors would generate a fluid and unfinished state. Gradually, he realized that only after the disintegration of nature entirely, in the traditional sense of painting, the dialogue between elements would become liberated, making it possible to produce a new wholeness and new relations.
The single works in the series The Nomads Square are given in chronological order numerically with the number of week and sequence number (e.g. 6_14). All paintings are oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cm courtesy the artist 2020.