In his meticulous and dense paintings, Jannis Marwitz confronts us with scenes – or entries to narrations – packed with figures and details. What we see evokes echoes of traditional paintings and symbols as well as of contemporary visual gleams, such as referencing to objects of nowadays. In an intriguing way, these echoes occur in the painting gestures, in the choices of content and compositions, but also correspond within Marwitz’ own body of work: figures, objects, and sometimes entire sceneries reappear, with slight changes in detail or colour, recall our memory of what we have seen, what we might be able to comprehend out of the story of his practice as a whole. In the interview we talk with him about his path from abstract to figurative, about influences of the past and today, about visual assemblages, techniques, colour and light.
Jannis Marwitz’ exhibition „The Raid“ at Galerie Barbara Weiss in Berlin runs from April 30 to June 12, 2021.
Interviewed by Batsheva Ross and Olaf Winkler.
This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels
