HOME BY THE SEA, COLOGNE 2023
KUNSTGRUPPE, COLOGNE 2023
THE LAND BEFORE TIME, LEIPZIG 2023
CLUB EIGELSTEIN COLOGNE, 2023
PAINT THE TOWN, MD COLOGNE 2023
TIERE, CATHERINE ZETA COLOGNE 2022
MD BAR, DC OPEN COLOGNE 2022
TRYIN‘ TO READ YOUR PORTRAIT
GALERIE SUSANNE NEUERBURG | 12.4. – 21.5.2021
SEBASTIAN FRITZSCH UND MARCO ZUMBÉ
Abstract painting is once again very popular in contemporary art.
For a long time, it had been lost from view. After the Second World War, it was ideologically and culturally praised as the superiority of Western art over socialist realism. But since the 1960s, when art was also expected to play a socio-critical and time-reflective role, it has received less attention because of its lack of narrative character.
So pure seeing is celebrated again. In terms of content, the viewer is given freedom to extract from the pictures that which is not immediately predetermined by representational elements, like an invitation to pause and concentrate.
A great love of experimentation can be seen in the works of Marco Zumbé (born 1975, Cologne). Starting from line, point and surface, the basic elements of every drawing, combined with an exuberant choice of colours, he creates opulent pictorial landscapes.
Numerous layers of the most diverse graphic and painterly components, combined with screen-printing techniques, form the texture of his pictures. His choice of tools and materials testify to his desire to question conventional painting methods. His pool of material consists of patterns from the dusty interior design of past decades, such as imitation wood, floral patterns and awning stripes, which are underlaid with gestural painting and in turn also covered over.
TO YOUR LEFT A PLEASANT SIGHT
Kunstraum Ung5, Cologne
30.10.- 14.11.2020
Groupshow – Tahnee Godt,Tom Krol, Marco Zumbé
Bikini Deep
A sculpture doesn’t occupy a room, usually it is creating it. At first you can’t imagine this when you are looking at Marco Zumbé’s work as the canvas blind is occupying the entire exhibition room. It is not hanging outside over the shop window, it is hanging inside the exhibition room. However, once you start looking at the canvas, you are approaching its layers, grids and lines – everything seems to be in motion, a bit undisciplined and wild – and you soon get a feeling for its harmonious and rhythmical condition. A condition that leaves enough room for playfully plunging into the matrix and surfaces and appear again in a different position somewhere else.
Neither Marco Zumbé’s work nor the meaning of the defintion of sculpture at the beginning of this text describe a physical room. However, both the narrowness as well as the position of the canvas blind leave room for further interpretation. Influenced by the two current crisis (Corona virus and climate) there is even more room for interpretation or the other way round – the interpretation can lead to these two themes. In fact the lockdown is loosening right now. One can visit beer gardens or cafés again under canvas blinds, even public pools are open again. However, due to the position of Marco Zumbé’s work and the irritation resulting from it one can still feel the lockdown or can clearly remember it.
Thomas Zika’s work Vertical Pools is presenting itself clearly, calmly and resolutely – one can even call it „straight“. Travelling along the Route Nationale in France, one can’t miss these huge bathtubs. It seems they are randomly positioned into the landscape, almost surreal, and therefore these vertical pools present themselves with an incredible sculptural potential. The shapes of the pools vary from classical rectangular to embryo like and rectangular rounded down shapes.
We sat in Thomas Zika’s studio in summer 2019 and were talking about his pools again. The new high temperature records in France that were rising ever higher in various places in the country (new all-time record of 45,9 degrees in Gallargues-le-Montueux near Montpellier) had a massive impact on our conversation. At that time Greta was peparing her sailing trip over the Atlantic. The start on 21st September was already noted in the diary. The idea arose quickly to present the photos Vertical Pools that were shot between 2007 and 2009 as part of an exhibition concept that is dealing with the topic climate change.
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
Reiners Contemporary Art, Marbella/Spain
In his show „Welcome to the Jungle“, Marco Zumbé is presenting his latest screenprint-paintings. They deal with the question of the original and its technical reproduction in art. He starts with a concise, gestural composition of various lines, that he transfers to differently painted backgrounds using the screen printing process. As a result one can see a series of duplications of a single motif, that, however, results into individual, independent works because of the different background „settings“. The composition as well as the background are characterized by repetition, rhythm and a picturesque musicality. The motif and „setting“ are formed separately as individual works that finally merge during the printing process. Lines are on top of others or underneath, foreground and background become blurred. The result is a complex, sculptural composition with an atmospheric, narrative density.
In his abstract works, Marco Zumbé deals with fundamental compositional and creative issues of painting, above all with the line as a formative element.
Here he uses unconventional materials from areas of commercial art or interior design. Zumbé works on unprimed canvas with marker pens, uses screen printing or he layers plastic sheets that he paints and mixes with textiles. These techniques serve to deconstruct his compositions, which he fans out in several levels and reassembles to get to the bottom of them.
TeaForFive@DD55
DD55 Gallery, Cologne
Brunhilde Bordeaux-Groult / Sebastian Fritzsch
Ankica Marjanovic / Linda Nadji / Marco Zumbé
TeaForFive
Brunhilde Bordeaux-Groult / Sebastian Fritzsch
Ankica Marjanovic / Linda Nadji / Marco Zumbé
Eröffnung 14.6.2019 / 19:00 -open end
Samstag 15.6.2019 / 14:00 – open end
Sonntag 16.6.2019 / 14:00 – 19 00
Polymedialer Ponyhof / Kienitzer Str. 11 / 12053 Berlin
KUNSTGRUPPE – ART COLOGNE 2019 – SALON SCHMITZ, Aachener Str. 28, 50674 Köln
BUSSI
Groupshow – 10.4 – 14.4.2019
Quolabo Studio – Cologne – curated by Alexander Warhus
OPEN STUDIO | MARCO ZUMBÉ
LINIEN
Sonderausstellunng im Museum Domschatz Halberstadt
The line, according to Paul Klee, is „thought“, and the thought is a „medium between earth and cosmos“. The line that makes visible is a mediator between the visible and the invisible world. But the line also „the first movable act“, a primium movens – and thus creative.The line shapes and becomes art. „Art“, therefore „is a parable of creation“.
Paul Klee, Notebooks Vol I, The thinking eye
In his abstract works, Marco Zumbé deals with the line as a formative element in painting and above all with this moment of decision in which an abstract line becomes a representation of a real form. His works always moves between these two poles, which leads to abstract pain-tings with a narrative soul. For this he uses unconventional materials from the fields of com-mercial graphics or interior design. Zumbé works on unprimed canvas with marker pens and corresponding cartouches with alcohol-based ink, or he layers foils on top of each other, which he mixes with textiles and paints or printing on it. The painting backgrounds are always worked on from both sides, the picture is fanned out into two or more layers.
The starting point here is a composition of lines that intertwine, overflow and undermine each other. This construct is brought onto the unprimed canvas in an unconscious painterly act with liquid ink. The canvas absorbs the paint and by overdosing the line expands on the painting surface, thus becoming itself a form. Zumbé does not paint on the canvas, he paints into it, colors the canvas fabric and thus creates the impression as if the line compositions were peeling out of the canvas, spreading even further after we have already turned our backs on them. Through our contemplation we experience only a fleeting moment of a continuous process. This third, temporal dimension breathes life into the abstract lines: The abstract construct certifies itself by this deceptive appearance of an independent reality. Zumbé’s line compositions often seem like amorphous organisms, living sculptures in an incised space. He fills these spaces inside and outside the line formations with marker pens with which he works on both sides of the canvas, whereby the painting process on the back of the canvas shows itself to the viewer on the front only in the excessive traces of the hatching of the pens. Zumbé documents here the process of painting, the result of which remains hidden from the viewer.
In his collage works, these unconsciously created constructs are fanned out on several levels by transfer to transparent foil and broken down into their individual parts. Each line has its own character: Zumbé paints them with paint on foil, cuts them out of fabrics or creates them by filling the surfaces outside the edges of the lines. By joining the individual layers together, the finished image is created: a singular whole that, on closer inspection, allows the information of the individual parts and the creative process to remain visible
Claudia Wyludda, Curator
09. September 2017 – 14. Januar 2018
Ausstellungseröffnung Freitag, 8. September 2017
um 18.30 in den Domschatz
Domplatz 16a
D-38820 Halberstadt
halberstadt@die-domschaetze.de
VARIOUS INK
pop;68 | 4.3-22.3.2017 |cologne
Marco Zumbé’s work is formed at the point when the abstract line creates a real image for the viewer. Lines are the most important artistic elements in his drawings and paintings. He uses them to boldly fill empty spaces acting almost intuitively without any plan in mind. This automatic construction of lines is transferred onto transparent foil in layers. Every line has its own character. Zumbé draws them on foil with colour, cuts them out of fabric or colours in all but the outside edges. The final image is formed when the different layers are merged together but on closer examination the individual components are still visible. In his recent works lines lose their graphic appearance. They expand, flow into each other and form surreal shapes that resemble sculptures or abstract portraits.
Marco Zumbé lives and works in Cologne, Germany.
KUNSTGRUPPE KÖLN
salon schmitz, cologne
„BUSSI“GROUPSHOW
TAHNEE GODT PHILIP EMDE(TIM) JULIAN GORTEN MARCO ZUMBÉ
15.04 – 30.04.2016 Fr/Sa 16-20 | Engelbertstrasse 51, 50674
WYSIWYG – what you see is what you get
Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Cologne-based artist Marco Zumbé, 2015 AAI artist-in-residence.
Entitled WYSIWYG: what you see is what you get, the exhibition’s title borrows from a term used to describe program interface that replicates the final appearance of a document or image during the editing process. Widely used today, the concept was first introduced in the mid-70s and popularized within a decade of its development. As the application of WYSIWYG programs expanded, a growing number of users were able to create and manipulate digitally based text, websites and images without an in-depth knowledge of HTML-code. While, in many ways, a milestone in the democratization of technology, the proliferation of such programs posed a new set of challenges — namely, the variation between displays meant that identical images across all platforms and devices could not be assured.
Zumbé’s recent work gestures towards this challenge—that the appearance of an image cannot be replicated across all states—while also confronting the program’s intention to integrate the manipulation and perception of an image into a singular experience. Painting broad unconscious strokes on combined layers of plastic sheets, metallic foil and fabric, Zumbé builds subtle compositions that create the appearance of structure and space. With mirrored elements along the surface of each work, the reflected image of the exhibition environment then becomes, temporarily, integrated with the work itself. As a result, the appearance of each image becomes inherently tied to the context in which it is displayed.
While the drag-and-drop method of WYSIWYG programs allows a visual perception of accuracy, it is, in fact code—a string of abstract signatures—that renders the final form. Similarly, Zumbé implies the presence of a single image while unobtrusively revealing the layers of information that generate each construction.
text by jodi waynberg, curator artistallianceinc
EXHIBITION
dec 11 – jan 10
OPENING
friday dec 11 6-8 pm
CUCHIFRITOS
120 Essex Street
(inside essex street market)
new york, ny 10002
hours: tuesday – sunday from 12-6pm
for appointment call +1 646 824-7290
gallery@artistsallianceinc.org mail@mzumbe.de
folk poetry
installationview tuesday 21.4 – friday 24.4
lindenstrasse 4 , 50674 Köln
http://linie14.blogspot.de/
KUNSTGRUPPE – ART COLOGNE 2014 – SALON SCHMITZ, Aachener Str. 28, 50674 Köln
OHNE TITEL ABER MIT MELONE – 5,26m3, Köln
WHAT IF YOU DON´T COME ALONG WITH MY TABLE COMPANIONS
OPENING 20.9.2014 – 19 – 22 h
Anne-Katrin Ahrens, Suse Bauer, Stefan Behlau, Sarah Bohn, Lynn Dohrmann, Philip Emde, Jessica Halm, Lisa Herfeldt, Barbara Krimm, Lutz Krüger, Josephine Kyhn, Peter Langer, Dennis Loesch, Armin Lorenz Gerold, Philipp Rupp, Timo Rychert, Hans Stützer, Rouven Schmitt Hersfeld, Hank Schmidt in der Beek, Fabian Schubert, Anne Vagt, B. Wayne, Thomas Winkler, Ulrich Wulff, Sebastian Zarius, Marco Zumbé
EXHIBITION 21.9. – 1.11.2014
INSTITUT Reichenberger Str. 177, 10999 Berlin, U-Bahn Kottbusser Tor
KUNSTGRUPPE – ART COLOGNE 2014 – SALON SCHMITZ, Aachener Str. 28, 50674 Köln
P-SHIRTS II / Hallmackenreuther – Brüsseler Platz 9, 50674 Köln