Nomads Square # 04-5 Print

"To be an artist is to believe in life." - Henry Moore - CRYSTAL MIRROR – a series of non-representational paintings “Basically I would consider myself as a conceptual artist, and by this I follow researching ideas of understanding the contemporary issues of he "world" by transforming visual statements. In this work series Crystal Mirror serves as a flight path and it’s aeronautical checkpoint by facing the infinite variety of events and things that affect us every moment, to summarize and to let go again. I would call the point of origin to that series a diverse Multidisciplinary, that reaches back to the origin of expression.” Marc Schmitz The mirror stands for the undisturbed reflection of images by the light. Without any effort any mirror at an airport washroom reflects thousands of faces per day. The mirror does not “care” what it “shows”, and by that it has been a symbol for the perfection of “truth”. Marc Schmitz comes with a set of artworks that seem quite relevant to the times. Through “The Mirror…”, the artist seeks to investigate the state of ‘obsession’. “The lure and pull that an obsession can wield, is similar to that of a mirror. A mirror also draws you in; entraps you. It accumulates your obsessions. It symbolises obsession.” The artist looks at our relationships, our politics, our faiths, our wisdom, our communities, our gods—obsessions, in short. The artist breaks free from convention and appropriates some of the most advanced technical components from the latest “revolution” in arts. With these new transformational enabling tools in painting, along with the traditional techniques from art, science, philosophy, poetry and industries, the artist articulates and facilitates his deeply personal exploration into the fundamental questions of human condition. And during that process, he erases the gaps between modernity and tradition, reality and unreality, life and substance, between individuals, and even the essential difference between human and other forms of life. Marc Schmitz`s painting practice may contribute to this sensitivity to the “unexpected” state, which makes him often stop before the changes of daily things and rethink the habits and laws in his own consciousness and behavior. Together with other similar events, “accident” promotes his repeated examination of the substance and functionality of painting materials, and also makes him interact with a certain painting tradition. All the time, Marc likes to find the traces of painting from real life. Following this path, he tried to combine freely and “accidentally” these simple structures and materials in an atypical way, and treat the material properties from a daily perspective, emphasizing the function and potential carried by the material itself, or spread, or reinforce, or wrap, or tighten, so that the material in the surface coating between the colors would generate a fluid and unfinished state. Gradually, he realized that only after the disintegration of the whole nature in the traditional sense of painting, the dialogue between parts would be liberated, making it possible to produce new wholeness and new relations. As the supports of the painting shift from rectangle to irregular shape, from single layer to multi-layer, from wall to ground, the once absolutely important single surface is dismembered into several small pieces of different sizes, shapes, colors and textures, either scattering in the structure, or connecting and separating to form cross sections that are interrelated but not supportive. On the one hand, the entity of itself is interfered with by the relations which are continually generated, either on the surface of which it is supposed to be supported, or on the surface of which it is supposed to be supported. Together, they construct a temporary spatial structure for the “surface” or “plane” to stay or run briefly. On the other hand, the supports that get rid of the hanging structure balance with gravity in a new way. Through clear and variable shapes and uncertain spatial construction, my practice aims to outline a self-deconstructed and self-generated scene, and at the same time endue form with an indescribable critical state. In such a setting and critical state, what the work shows is its uncontrollability. Any concept and explanation may become a misjudgment or an adaptation of “righteousness”.