Artist: Bradley Davies and Mickael Marman
Exhibition title: Keeping Up Appearances
Venue: Neuer Essener Kunstverein, Essen, Germany
Date: June 30 – September 2, 2018
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Philipp Kurzhals/Neuer Essener Kunstverein
Hey Moritz,
As I try to grapple with writing, which is by no means a forte of mine, I try to condense a few sentences that will give insight. I bring up an anecdote from Michael Krebber because Krebber’s name was brought up on a few occasions during my stay in Essen.
Michael Krebber once gave me an anecdote about a time he was in a taxi with a gallerist he admired, perhaps keen to impress, when he was younger and, I believe, still an assistant to Martin Kippenberger. The gallerist asked him about Krebber’s work, and Krebber replied, “My work is the work of Kippenberger”. It took me a moment to digest this. Krebber was not saying he had no work of his own, but he was moonlighting as Kippenberger. What I mean to say by mentioning this is that work can be used as a guise, even though in the hand of someone else’s creation, fictive or real, like an umbrella of sorts, the two can be co-inhabitants, come rain or sunshine. Cloaking as it may be because there are many levels of which to deal with the sheer variety of relations here, interior and exterior. Although I would perhaps argue against it being some kind of a safety net. It can be taken as a whole, but remembering the whole thing is in transit anyways – best not to dwell on this too long. It is a continual process of occurrences in which we find ourselves again – birds of the same feather.
All my best,
Bradley (11.7.2018)
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From: marmanmickael@gmail.com
To
Date: 24.3.2016. / 15:37
I see myself and am often told that I’m very much a “hitting from the bat” kind of person. Saying things as they are — or as one of my professors said “Mickael talks often in short hand.” It could be interpreted as such.
I was never good in figurative painting, it always ended up as an illustration of thoughts or even worse just an illustration of an idea of what you think you want to say.
In the second half of my first year at the HfBK I painted self-portraits nonstop from January to April, I painted the last self portrait one hour before I went to New York to visit my ex girlfriend. A hideous red andblack “bad paintings” painting.
I “knew” somehow this would be the last self portrait or a figurative painting for a very good while, little did I know that this would actually come true as when I came back later that month I started to paint in an abstract style again.
A friend actually bought that painting.
I don’t like that he has that painting, and I’m considering buying it back.
