malen, tanzen... weiterschauen

Murat Önen

Info: Galerie Max Mayer is pleased to present malen, tanzen… weiterschauen, Murat Önen’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, featuring a new body of work including works on paper and canvas. A painter is caught in the midst of his process: Making an abstract painting while everyone is watching. This scene, encountered upon entering the gallery, sets the tone for the exhibition. While continuing a close study of other painters’ works, Murat Önen has been preoccupied with his own role as an artist, social expectations and the painting process itself for this new body of work. A figure resembling the artist stands on a stage, observed by an audience composed of portraits of other (historical) artists and figures they painted. Murat Önen works both with and against art history, using it as a kind tool box – extracting details from other paintings, transforming them, devouring them, only to spit them out as his own. His works resist a singular methodology or technique, while openly revealing their process and exposing bits of their previous versions. Besides turning the process into its own sujet, Murat Önen is also interested in chasing and finding a certain excitement in the works’ own development. (…)