The collection presentation Kunst aus Leipzig (Art from Leipzig), which will open in 2022, does not see itself as completed, but as a dynamic process. In a continuous exchange, works from the MdbK’s holdings are integrated into the hanging to offer new perspectives on Leipzig’s art in the 20th and 21st centuries. In addition, under the title “In Focus”, the museum is now inviting artists in loose succession to set a special accent within the tour through a condensed presentation of some of their works. The first of these is the Leipzig painter Malte Masemann (*1979).
Image above: The Large Buffet, 2022, private collection, © artist, Courtesy Galerie Tobias Naehring, Photo: dotgain
In Suitable for Framing, the artist shows a selection of new and older works. In his work, he is interested in the relationship between the present and the past – and in a certain way this also determines his working method. Masemann often uses photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries as the starting point for his paintings. On the mostly large-format canvases, historical figures appear in a peculiarly transformed form.
The original representational content of the photographic originals is shifted and new readings emerge. Masemann finds a contemporary pictorial language in the arrangement of drawing, colouring and space. Through reduction – often a face or a piece of clothing – and colour alienation, the artist intensifies this tension. Malte Masemann’s paintings thus present a paradox: they are present recordings of moments from the past that can, as it were, expand into the present and in this process become something new. At the same time, an intensive dialogue develops between photography and painting, ultimately raising the question of the authenticity of the momentary itself.
Malte Masemann was born in Kiel and studied at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig from 2004 to 2011. He was a student in Neo Rauch’s painting class and a master student of Heribert C. Ottersbach. Masemann stands in the tradition of the New Leipzig School, which he enriches with innovative stylistic expressions, especially in the depiction of figures. Malte Masemann lives and works in Leipzig.
WHERE?
Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig
Katharinenstraße 10
04109 Leipzig
WHEN?
Exhibition days:
Thursday, 23 March – Sunday, 18 June 2023
Opening hours:
Mon closed
Tue, Thu-Sun 10am-6pm
Wed 12-20 h
