In the Gallery with Marlon Wobst скачать в хорошем качестве

In the Gallery with Marlon Wobst

Join us in meeting Berlin-based artist Marlon Wobst prior to the opening of his new solo exhibition at Galleri Urbane, 'LOCKERUNGSÜBUNG.' An essay by Eve Hill-Agnus accompanies 'LOCKERUNGSÜBUNG.' Bodies fill Marlon Wobst’s work. They swim, sunbathe, tumble, strain, recover, lounge; they stack and entangle, bend forward and backward, touch their toes. They are unmistakably of our world, yet somehow absorbed in their own. In one felted work, a multi-hued tangle of figures forms a buoyant melee, a joyous muddle that effervescently defies gravity—as if togetherness itself were enough to lift them. Elsewhere, a nude diver slips headfirst into an expanse of blue; only pink feet remain above the water’s surface, briefly marking the point of departure. The plunge is underway, whether we follow it or not. Wobst’s figures are wobbly, imperfect, resolutely unheroic. Their awkwardness carries a kind of humility. Skin tones slide across improbable registers, a colorist’s pleasure that reads as affection more than any stylization, intuitive and unburdened by correctness. In ceramic works, a man might stroke a cat; another paint an elephant on his own belly. These gestures feel playful and, while minor, far from empty. They read like pieces of the paintings that have wandered off—modest, tactile, and quietly amused. His work has often implied water. Recent underwater scenes heighten this suspension. When the entire canvas is submerged, buoyancy replaces gravity as the governing force, and entire zones slip into abstraction. Figures hover, drift, linger. Do we really need an explanation for why? The title LOCKERUNGSÜBUNG—a loosening, warm-up, or resting exercise—seems apt. These are moments not of peak performance but of recovery, transition, preparation. The in-between moments we usually forget to mention. Wobst’s world is full of small, impossible moments and gestures that double as jokes. There is a quiet joie de vivre here—a generosity of feeling that allows imperfection to remain visible. In Wobst’s work, joy is not an effect but a way of paying attention. Light-heartedness, ultimately, is ethical. Canonical art history often trains us to look for the dive and the treasure—the climax, the revelation. Wobst gives us the diver, but withholds the prize. What emerges instead is something more human and emotionally complicated: delight tinged with vulnerability, cheerfulness shadowed by time, and the sense that even play requires care.