Stefan Marx, German artist and creator of many a witty line drawing, opens solo show Feelings aren’t final tomorrow evening at Antwerp’s PLUS-ONE gallery.
Marx, whose works are heavily influenced by skate culture, has a practice which extends beyond the typical borders of contemporary art, as is the case with many of his fellow skate-aficionado artists. Designing posters and covers for record labels, as well as T-shirts, the occasional board and the odd tattoo, Marx’s work traverses high and low culture, for this show in particular, finding its way to the more traditional format of wall-hung, two-dimensional drawings.
The images are all monochrome, either big, bubbly letters glowing from a sea of scribbly black, or else wobbly-edged line drawings of characters, some lone, some closely grouped, with comically protruding lips, tiny adjoined eyes and melty, oddly phallic hairdos and caps. The characters seem lost in thought, or perhaps, simply devoid of it. Satisfying slippage of facial construction — one girl’s left spectacle lens covering both of her eyes, the other sitting empty — creates an image of the human falling apart at the seams, in works which feel observational and everyday, but simultaneously, rather alien.
‘Stefan Marx: Feelings aren’t final’ shows at Plus One gallery from 17 November until 17 December
