'Martin Colden: October 7, 2022– December 31, 2022

 

 

New Work, October 7. 2022 – December 31. 2022

The Wall Gallery is proud to announce that German artist Martin Colden will be exhibiting recent works on paper made in 2022. In his solo engagement he brings a stunning collection of drawings fresh from his studio outside Berlin. Colden’s work is a contagious energetic and highly focused venture of deeply connected gestures. Themes of an abstract musical organization are suggested by calligraphic moments, framing passages and imbuing the field with a unique energy and vision. They possess a special differentiation that escapes convention and yet magically produces classical beauty, unlocking unseen manifestations of mark making’s potential for meaning.

The Opening Reception for Martin Colden is on:

October 7 2022, 6 to 10pm.

The Gallery will be open on Saturday October 8 and Sunday October 9 2022 from 1 to 6pm.

For appointment call: 718 781 8263

Photos: Marc Schwaer

 

MARTIN COLDEN

By Scott Pfaffman

 

Martin Colden sent us two boxes of drawings. The first arrived September 12, 2022. Franz Landspersky retrieved it from the delivery service and brought it over to the gallery. We ended up waiting a day to open it so we could both be present. Economically packed it measured 12”x 16” and was 6” deep. Inside were twelve folded drawings. They measured between 12” and 48” wide. One single little gem appeared: a portrait of Marilyn Monroe. She stewarded the contents across the Atlantic to guarantee their safe arrival. The contents was subsequently spread over a table and the unfolding of each became a performance, successively enlarging formats, with the lines telling new stories at each shift in scale. Finger, Hand, Wrist, Arm, Shoulder, Torso, Body. A set of gestural drawings on paper made with a variety of brushes, and black and red ink, calligraphic, alphabet like at some passages but every mark purposely deconstructed and rebuild as a visual sign and a purposeful obliteration of the abstraction of language. Twombly’s lyric gyrations and Pollock’s symbol soups are the literal footnotes. Language, Martin’s language is the drawing, the entire drawing and all drawing because no other source of meaning or means of communication are possible. Colden gives us meaning without attendant metaphor, in a series of definite and direct visions. The variety expands the language while at the same time rebuffing the alphabetic. And the scale of marks moves to set graduations along an implied graph so that shifts are coordinated between layers and between the folds over which the marks are made.

As the various pieces were excavated, unfolded and flattened out on several tables in the gallery the space of the drawings and the space of the room became strangely imbued with some kind of architecture of marks and a tangible sense of meaning, the real meaning of art was readily apparent. That is to say that the essential irreducible sense of art making, one which is detached from the object, begins to inhabit the space of ideas within our consciousness. I confess that the adrenaline rush, somewhat like intoxication, was tangible. This dematerialization is at the heart of Martin Colden’s art. Using his body and brush and coded gestures we are presented this magnificent banquet and an invitation to imbibe to bathe within. The life of every guest is changed and enlarged and I encourage you make an appointment to visit The Wall Gallery. You have until December 31.