Objects and Paintings by Thomas Sommer at Maerzgalerie
LEIPZIG.- The provisional arrangement – a workable temporary solution or an improvised permanent alternative? “It is almost as good as the real, perfect thing, only quicker.”
Thomas Sommer is exhibiting paintings (acrylic, ink and stylus) and objects from the past two years in the maerzgalerie Berlin – all are plenary and completed.
The screens are filled; the apocalypse. The aim, says Sommer, was to represent the worst: something typical – a crowd marked by sorrow. You can see it from an Olympic position: an endless armada of tiny methyl-violet Miserables, twining over the screens, meticulously and relentlessly formulated. Forworn, it lingers by a figure of light, at the feet of the trumpet players of Jericho, and – having no alternatives – moves on towards an indefinite Last Judgement. The motif covers stretched landscape formats on which the blind crowd meanders through obstacles towards the conceivable finale: backwards along Ariadne’s thread.
Thomas Sommer, Dünne Decke, acryl, oil, indelible pencil, lacquer, ink, crayon on canvas, 70 x 100 cm, 2010. Photo: Courtesy maerzgalerie Leipzig / Berlin, Germany
In between are the object boxes; vitrified interludes made up of oaken raree shows – miraculous cases, as if coming from a fairy tale. The boxes intrigue the viewers, making them want to unpack and peek more accurately to see what is hidden in the non-visible corners, searching for the fallacious, for valuables, the symbolic, for curiosities.
Summer does not agitate or over-egg. He avoids the creation of superstructures. The works do not represent something, they are something. They are an offer, rather than an overbearance.
Thomas Sommer was born in Saxony, studied at the School of Visual Arts in Leipzig, i.a. under Arno Rink and attended Sighard Gille’s master class. Sommer’s works have been shown, i.a., in Frankfurt, Berlin, Offenbach and Leipzig, and are exhibited in public and private collections. Various publications, for example, “Die Erde ist eine Scheibe in der Mitte des Universums,” Leipzig 2006 “C 1 – C 14”, Leipzig 2008.
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