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Marc BAUER

Introduction

From the very outset, Marc Bauer opted for pencil and eraser to create images that evince traces of a long history. Before these images were selected by the artist for a continued, enhanced life, they had often already become iconic historical images in their own right. They therefore form part of the collective social and historical memory, and are used individually or interspersed or mixed with imagery from the personal history of the artist. In short, these are images that have, in one way or another, found the artist. Marc Bauer, in drawing these pictures, attempts to get a grasp on reality.

Marc Bauer makes his drawings in normal or lithographic pencil, on small and large formats or wall drawings which are integrated into the surrounding architecture. The artist makes it very apparent that the images are 'mediated', have been translated into a different medium. Most often, they initially came to him as photographs but are just as well taken from memories. Often, parts of drawings are erased, whereby traces of the effacing are used as the background for a new drawing. The slowness with which the entire process of realisation takes place, is extremely important to Bauer. Drawing creates a mental space for him.

Bauer often conceives his drawings as series and likes to present them as site-specific installations. The disruptive sequences that are created in this way, offer the spectator the opportunity to fill in the empty spaces between the successive images. The viewer is consciously challenged and positioned somewhere between the artist's image and the memories it evokes in him. Bauer aims to address an educated spectator, who cooperates with him.
In the post-media era, in which a concentrated focus on a single medium is no longer considered of the time, Bauer bridges the classical gap between the media of drawing (Disegno) and painting (Colorito), precisely because he developed a specific pictorial art of drawing.

Though Marc Bauer’s drawings are created on the basis of photographs, Marc Bauer doesn't just copy photographs. He draws his memories of them. Commenting on the function of memory, the artist states: “It suffices to count to ten and everything becomes a memory.” Photography is about images that are complete, that are set, that are fixed. Drawings, on the other hand, make evident they are the result of a process that has taken place over a period of time. Drawings allow the artist to open up time. The drawings always reveal their state of incompleteness, unfinishedness. His drawings reveal more about the drawing process than about the subject of the drawing itself.

Marc Bauer draws in black and white, grey tones. Colour is used sparingly and always for specific reasons, not to show colour as such, but rather to modulate the emotion of the drawing or the distance to the viewer.

Marc Bauer (°1975 in Geneva. Lives and works in Berlin and Zürich) studied at Ecole Supérieure d’Art Visuel in Geneva and State Academy of Fine Arts, Amsterdam.

In 2021 Bauer was part of the group show ‘The Roaring Twenties’ at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, SP. Earlier this year, ‘L’état de la Mer’ was his third institutional solo show at FRAC Auvergne FR.

Bauer’s ‘Mal Ȇtre / Performance’ showed a new body of work commissioned jointly by Drawing Room (‘19) and De La Warr Pavilion (‘20) and was the artist’s first solo show in a UK public gallery.
In 2020 he won ‘The Prix Meret Oppenheim’ which honours achievements in the fields of art, architecture and critique/publishing/exhibition. He also won ‘The 2020 GASAG Kunstpreis’, a cooperation with the Berlinische Galerie.

A selection of solo shows: Frieze Projects, London, UK (’17) Musée Jenisch, Vevey, CH (’17 & ’16), Freymond-Guth Fine Arts, Zürich, CH (‘15), FRAC Paca, Marseille, F (‘15), Deweer Gallery, Otegem, BE (‘15), Museum Folkwang, Essen, DE (‘14), FRAC Alsace, Sélestat, F (‘14), FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, FR (‘14), Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris, FR (‘13), Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel, CH (‘12) and Kunstmuseum Sankt-Gallen, CH (‘10-‘11).

Bauer participates in many group exhibitions: ‘SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement’, the 21st Biennale of Sydney, AU in 2018; Drawing Center, Diepenheim (NL), Drawing Biennial, London UK, Centre Pompidou, Paris FR, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aargau (CH) in 2017; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich CH, Rencontres d'Arles, Arles (F), FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand FR, KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg DK in 2016; S.M.A.K., (Museum of Contemporary Art), Ghent BE, Albertina Museum, Vienna AT, Kunsthaus Zürich (CH), Kunstverein Konstanz, Konstanz DE in 2015 and in Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK (‘14), FRAC, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, FR (‘13), Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, AT (‘12).

His work is present in many public and private collections: Crédit Suisse, Zürich, CH, Museum Folkwang, Essen, DE, FRAC Alsace, Selestat, FR, Migros museum für gegenwartskunst, Zürich, CH, FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, FR, Centre Pompidou, musée national d’art moderne, Paris, FR, Musée d’art de Pully, Lausanne, CH, Sturzenegger Stiftung, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, DE, Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, CH, Kunstmuseum Solothurn, CHand Kunsthaus Zürich, CH.