Bernhard Martin

(…) The fact that as a boy Martin expressed interest in such careers as pickpocket and chemist in the foodstuff industry is reflected in the artist’s open approach to his artistic practice. He has applied to his art the principles of selective appropriation and synthetic imitation, and indeed, a number of objects look like user-unfriendly versions of ready-to-use objects.

Numerous other pictures have been produced using a different technique and a montage-like composition. Bernhard Martin calls this process, which treats the boundaries between different genres like transit zones, hoarding and vagabondism. What I am interested in is the clash between islands, chambers of marvels, biotopes, contrasts. In other words, everyday life.

Consequently, he also repeatedly attemps to infiltrate various different systems like some kind of virus. These systems include illustrations in schoolbooks or the designs of chocolate bar wrappers. Conversely, the world of children’s images that determines these designs also latches onto Martin’s own pictorial production, with the result that beings with saucer-like eyes people whole series of pictures and the exagerated colorfulness of childlike Heidi-type worlds is a repeated feature of his canvases. However, despite all his affinity to the format of commodities, Bernhard Martin’s subjects remain the classical subjects of painting – landscapes, still life, portraiture, genre. Only his formulation transposes the academic canon into the present. The focus is no longer on the noble mountain panorama, but on the holiday complex, the restaurant visited on a trip in the country, the disco. Familiar scenes are transposed into a modern setting, both to test their relevance and as a study of the way in which the everyday lives on in another guise. Rejecting a particularly individual style, Martin’s painting is modeled on modern serial production.(…)

The fact that the leisure factor plays such a significant role in Martin’s work is probably the result of the interplay of innovation and boredom which characterizes this sector in its most commercialized form. A new, comprehensive series of pictures is entitled simply Sunday Series and is as exciting as a real Sunday, torn between sleeping in and going on a trip. Campsite impressions, men in swimming trunks, holiday complexes and swimming pools, are united under the heading Public Holiday. Bernhard Martin is not afraid to use the cliches of current leisure activities, since these very cliches form the subject of the contemporary genre picture, and behind its decorative colorfulness hides an affinity with the paintings of the Renaissance and the Baroque eras and their aesthetic elevation of the everyday. The history of art provides a book of patterns for anyone who can not only copy, but also actually masters the various techniques. Many of the things I find fascinating come from the Renaissance and the sources of my inspiration still include the German Renaissance and the Danube School, reports Martin, describing his appropriation concept like a true consumer as picture shopping.

Unlimited Contemporary Art

Vanessa Joan Muller, About the hoarding and vagabondism (excerpts) in catalogue of the exhibition Softcore, Mannheimer Kunstverein, 2001.