ABOUT

With their bright colors and featureless faces, Marlon Wobst's pictures until this point cultivated a charged tension between boisterous activity, and a slightly eery absence of intention. In other words, no object or expectation. Just play. Play is here also a metonym for the act of painting itself. Whereas child’s play is undertaken solely in pursuit of the natural right of pleasure, these paintings undertake the adult variation on this theme; pursuing free play via the unplanned — or barely planned — image, they also take part in a constantly unfolding reminder of play’s human necessity. As the child psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott put it: “It is creative apperception more than anything else that makes the individual feel that life is worth living.”

Marlon Wobst (B. 1980 in Wiesbaden) graduated as a painter and master student at Universität der Künste Berlin in 2011 with Professor Robert Lucander. In his body of work, which includes oil paintings, felt tapestries, ceramics, and works on paper; he mainly addresses the human existence. He researches typical everyday moments in life, such as getting dressed, exercising, eating, resting or mating; his large scale paintings, the colorful felt works and rather small, intimate ceramics are all glimpses in his, but also human, experiences, rituals and habits. His works are shown internationally in galleries, museums and institutions such as Kunstverein Siegen (Siegen), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), Kunsthalle Hangelar (Sankt Augustin), Galerie Maria Lund (Paris), Galerie Zeller van Almsick (Vienna), and Galleri Urbane (Dallas). Since 2021, Marlon Wobst has a lectureship for painting at the Universität der Künste Berlin.