Dialogue with a Ghost Stefan Marx

Stefan Marx (b. 1979 in Schwalmstadt, DE) presents Dialogue with a Ghost, his first exhibition at Ruttkowski;68 in New York and seventh collaboration with the gallery.

Words and images from everyday life serve as the backdrop for Stefan Marx’s body of work. Drawing on a vast array of sources, such as lines and quotes lifted from music, film, theatre, literature, conversations, and social media, as well as the visual details of outfits, hairstyles and poses, the Berlin-based artist transposes social commentary on contemporary culture into his unique aesthetic. This non-hierarchical understanding of language is also reflected in his choice of media, which range from traditional image carriers such as canvas to everyday objects and monumental facades in the public space. By constantly challenging the conventional boundaries of art, Marx has established himself in recent years as a key figure in a generation of artists who use text and images from popular culture as both an artistic medium and an instrument of socio-political critique.

Dialogue with a Ghost comprises a new series of paintings that may well be the most enigmatic and unpredictable in the artist’s practice to date. The works presented in the exhibition, such as the three large-scale paintings Multiple Crisis (2023), Multiple Crisis (White) (2023) and Multiple Crisis (Ghost) (2023), reflect the evolution of the experiments with painting that Marx has been exploring for almost two decades. His search for a loss of control in the creative process and the words present in the compositions can be understood as an echo of the uncertainty of the present time, felt on many levels in the European context in which the artist situates himself.

 

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