ART CITIES:Los Angeles-Markus Amm

Markus Amm concentrates on several groups of works at once, alternating between small and large formats, photograms, collages, and oil paintings. At first glance, each group of works seems complete in itself, but a closer look reveals that the artist poses formal questions that he answers in different ways. He continually returns to the question of the surface, which can be transparent, closed, reflecting, or opaque.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: David Kordansky Gallery Archive

Markus Amm is part of a generation of European painters whose work first came to wider attention in the landmark 2004 Kunstverein in Hamburg exhibition “Formalismus”, and who began to reconsider art’s process-based potential in the wake of conceptualism. New paintings of by Markus Amm are on presentation at the David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles. The ravishing fields of color that appear in Amm’s gesso board paintings, which constitute the entirety of this exhibition, represent one of the most sustained and sensuous bodies of work being made by a contemporary European artist. Created by infrequently pouring extremely thin layers of paint onto a prepared surface over long periods of time, the small-scale gesso boards reveal radiant compositions that develop and deepen before the viewer’s gaze. Markus Amm worked with several coats of chalk primer, this traditional material is called gesso-a chalk or plaster mixture which has been used since the 14th century to prime canvases and give them a smooth absorbent surface. In Amm’s art, the primer becomes a subject in its own right. Instead of covering the different colors of primer with a layer of oil paint or acrylics, Amm uses a difficult process to apply the primer in several coats, after which he removes or sands down selected sections. The result is a monochrome work with an unusual luminous intensity and gravitational pull. With the board laid flat on the floor, Amm then begins pouring paint, beginning the composition with a basic guiding idea (a particular shape or combination of colors, for instance), and allowing medium to flow over the panel’s sides. This brief period of action precedes an extended period of observation, one that can last anywhere from days to years, during which the paint dries and the next move is considered.

Info: David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W Edgewood Pl, Los Angeles, Duration: 16/2-24/3/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, http://davidkordanskygallery.com