Artist: Markus Saile

Markus Saile’s second solo exhibition at Mai 36 presents, for the first time, large-scale works that touch upon, and at times almost exceed, the dimensions of the human body and the associated function of the painting as a counterpart to it. The colours of the paintings unfold as a spatial dramaturgy: green and yellow each shape their own rooms, while blue works set distinct accents within the constellations of the exhibition. Through the arrangements and intervals of the architecture-related installation, specific correspondences emerge between the paintings, activating viewers and inviting them to set their gaze in motion and forge connections.

A large-scale painting in a pale, yellow ground (Untitled), like several other works in the exhibition, presents an indeterminate monochrome field. It is traversed by fluid horizontal structures that emerged in the process of applying the paint. Superimposed upon these are sweeping curves that seem to suggest an architectural space. The exhibition title, False Horizon, points to the tendency to search for references to reality within the paintings without being able to verify them with certainty. A false horizon is, first and foremost, a perceptual disturbance that occurs when a horizontal line is mistakenly interpreted as the horizon. The coordinates by which we locate ourselves in space are fundamentally shaken. Saile’s paintings, however, do not make any claim to a ‘correct’ horizon. Their abstract pictorial spaces are negotiated and modulated performatively on the surface through the act of painting, thereby also evoking references to the potentially infinite space of digital 3D modeling.

In this process, Saile works with gestures of concealment and revelation whose dynamism and engagement with the picture field evoke cinematic procedures: the gaze is held back, redirected, then partially released and opened up again. Within the exhibition’s arrangements, it can leap from one painting to another. What becomes visible in the traces of the painterly and material processes always appears in relation to what eludes the gaze. In the successive and overlapping layers of colour, each brushstroke is at once an event in the making of the painting and a record of what has been covered, shifted or preserved. Tension arises through transposition: between the flatness of the picture support and the suggestion of volume; between the static image and the movement implied by the trace of the brush.

Structure and depth develop through the superimposition of gestures, sweeps and loops. As the process unfolds, colours accumulate at the edges of the picture surface, while traces of successive layers converge into lines of demarcation. At the edges of the wooden panels, the paintings assert their material boundaries. Their structure holds the pictorial field within its outer limits. Yet on the picture surface, spatial relations remain unstable and potentially open out into the surrounding space. Texture becomes light; colour alternately comes forward and recedes. Brushstrokes meet, connect and at the same time retain their independence; they trace a gesture that is both present and already in the process of disappearing, held at the threshold of visibility within an embodied process of continual negotiation. The viewing subject is invited to situate themselves in relation to the painting and the space, and to reflect on the false horizons that emerge between them.

Text by Mareike Dittmer

Markus Saile’s (b. 1981 in Stuttgart, lives and works in Cologne, Germany) recent solo exhibitions include Z2O Project, Rome; Artothek, Cologne; Galerie DREI, Cologne; A+B Gallery, Brescia; NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen; and Galerie Markus Lüttgen, Düsseldorf, among others.

His work was included in the survey exhibition "Jetzt! Painting in Germany Today", presented at Kunstmuseum Bonn, Museum Wiesbaden, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz – Museum Gunzenhauser, and Deichtorhallen Hamburg. His works have also been featured in exhibitions at Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck; STRABAG Kunstforum, Vienna; Museo Licini, Ascoli Piceno; Pinacoteca Emilio Notte, Ceglie Messapica; Paik Hae Young Gallery, Seoul; Bel Ami, Los Angeles; Temporary Gallery, Cologne; Galerie Crone, Vienna; and RECEPTION, Berlin, among others.