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