November 8, 2014 – January 17, 2015

Oversized carrots, Manga girls, fairy tale characters, disconnected body parts, and fragments of surreal landscapes – this other world, which we encounter in the pictures by Martin Mannig, emerges from the intermingling, simultaneity and a constant exchange that takes place between various different levels of reality and a multitude of motifs. Symbolically loaded characters and subjects interact in his images according to an internal logic. This logic often reveals surprising connections that – to the normal spectator – appear as reversals of meaning and plays with expectation. The visually comprehensible narration conceals an even deeper level – a mirror world – behind it, where the categories of “real” and “fantastical” bleed into each other and can no longer be cognitively differentiated.

Here, Martin Mannig’s figures lead a life of their own. They move not only within the space of one image, but wander from one canvas to another. This circulation creates a multidimensional, often ambivalent cosmos, of which we see only single details, brief snapshots.

Martin Mannig’s working method has an experimental character. His figures and motifs do not arise from a concrete plan but are born in the process of painting. There is no consistent order within, or imposed on top of, the images. They confront us with simple pictorial components, like drawings or sketches on a wall. As an artist, Mannig works with the surface of the image, and this becomes a window into another world.

This world does not just challenge our normal associative processes but also pushes us beyond our understanding of reality. It confronts the viewer with the question: where did what we are seeing occur? In the outside world or in a mental space? In this way, his images lead the viewer to explore how far his powers of imagination can take him if no conventional boundaries are put in place.

Martin Mannig’s pictures provide the occasion for diverging thoughts. It is this ability to see one and the same thing from very different angles, which is the greatest loss as time passes. Mannig’s painting opens up access to a world behind the mirror, where reality is able to be perpetually and boundlessly transformed.