MARC STRAUS is proud to present its second one-person exhibition of paintings by Marin Majić.
A painter of psychic narratives, in the past 5 years Marin Majić has established himself as one of the leading young exponents of the Eastern European contemporary art scene. Revered for his mastery of details and gift of color, his paintings have been primarily figurative with fantastical narratives. Luscious foliage are backdrops to characters that may seem ordinary but then reveal disquieting oddities, for example a docile young girl with one arm too long.
In this new work Marin Majić pushes literal representational forms back and advances painterly chance and expression. Color has now been reduced from the pictorial plane; what is left are almost monochromatic paintings that have even greater intensity. These multifaceted paintings can be described as “working in reverse”. To achieve a surface devoid of any gestural marks, Majić repeatedly applies layers of paint only to then sand each down, leaving remnants of previous brushwork through the vigorous removal process. And this silt is precisely what Majić is interested in exploring – the memory traces that contribute to the whole visual surface.
These oil paintings strongly imply a textural surface but are in fact defiantly matte and smooth. Up close the paintings tenaciously reveal hidden layers that shine in rapid succession of vibrant pulsating colors, but quickly shadows back from afar. This vacillation between the seen and unseen reoccurs in what are the most discernible elements in the composition: the white graphic illustrations that define space and light.
Against a field mostly of black, white lines seem at first like free-spirited strides. In fact the viewer is able to discern narratives culled from early northern Renaissance woodblock prints of religious iconography, architectural structures, and more. A familiar aspect in his work, Majić simultaneously cites the source while manipulating with irreverence, creating a phantasmagoria of faces, objects, landscapes invite interpretations.
Majić’s paintings are what reproductions can never offer – they are emotional works that are concerned with tactile quality, revealing and disguising at the same time, objects that engage chance, instinct, the realms of collective and personal subconsciousness, all while expressing an individualistic sense of play through the materiality of paint. In the end these works are original and beautiful.
Marin Majić was born in 1979 in Frankfurt, Germany. He received his MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia. He was a finalist in the 45th Zagreb Salon as well as the Salon of Young Art, Zagreb, both in 2010. His work was included in the 2010 seminal exhibition After the Fall at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, NY, which traveled to the Knoxville Museum of Art. He has several exhibitions including ARNDT Gallery in Berlin 2014, ABC Berlin and Volta NY.