Artists

Markus Amm

Press release

Herald St is pleased to announce Hanging Light, an exhibition of new paintings by Markus Amm. Taking place in the gallery’s East London premises, the presentation will feature a dozen works on gesso board, a support developed by the Geneva-based, German artist as part of an idiosyncratic and technical method of working carefully honed over the last twelve years. Hanging Light is Amm’s seventh exhibition at the gallery since joining its roster in 2005.

Amm begins each work by stretching canvas over a wood panel and building layers of gesso, sanding between each application. The resulting surface has a chalky smoothness, over which thin washes of luminous oil pigments are brushed and spread. An alchemic suffusion forms between the porous tableau and wet paint, eventually crystallising into swathes of colour passages which seem to swoop over and under and merge into one another. Amm’s practice has roots in collage and analogue photography, and he likens his process to the chemistry of developing images. There is a temporal element to his work, as the dozens of strata require drying, and waiting. The silky, light-imbued surfaces give way to dark scumbled crusts on the edges, sometimes polished and at other times left raw, revealing the artist’s hand and adding a sculptural dimension to the object-paintings.