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Mark Fairnington Unnatural History

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Mark Fairnington Unnatural History Mark Fairnington UnnaturalMarkFairningtonHistory Mannheimer Kunstverein Mark Fairnington Galerie Peter Zimmermann Mannheimer KunstvereinMannheimer GaleriePeter/ Zimmermann Unnatural History Mark Fairnington Unnatural History 1 Mark Fairnington Unnatural History 2 3 Published on the occasion of 6 The Observing Eye Unnatural History 8 Das beobachtende Auge at Mannheimer Kunstverein and Galerie Peter Zimmermann 11 Specimens in February 2012 29 Paradise Birds 22 Interview with Darian Leader by Mannheimer Kunstverein e.V. Augustaanlage 58 D-68165 Mannheim, Germany 39 Bulls www.mannheimer-kunstverein.de 50 Im Gespräch mit Darian Leader and Galerie Peter Zimmermann Leibnizstraße 20 D-68165 Mannheim, Germany 57 Flora www.galerie-zimmermann.de 69 Eyes with design – Jaakko / Supergroup Studios 80 How can I move thee? photography – Peter White, Simon Steven & ??? ??? english translation – Amy Klement german translation – Catrin Huber 83 Displays print – Die Keure, Brugge, Belgium 92 Wie kann ich Sie? © Peter Zimmerman Gallery, Mark Fairnington and FXP Photography ISBN 978-3-9808352-9-9 95 Storage 106 Curriculum Vitae 108 Acknowledgements 4 5 The Observing Eye Martin Stather “The eyes of an animal when they consider a man are causes a pulling away, that maintains a distance blocks of stone, finishes off her sketches, signs them with particularly unique. Although not portraits in the attentive and wary. The same animal may well look between the subject of the painting and the viewer. his stamp, impresses on them his artistic hall-mark.” conventional sense, these images are, nonetheless, at other species in the same way. He does not reserve The living now seems lifeless, excised from the (Huysmans, 1884) distinctive in their portrayal and in the respect a special look for man. But by no other species except normal passage of time, dissected with the eye and Since nature is also no longer what it once was. that is perceptible in them and expressed in taking man will the animal’s look be recognized as familiar. put together anew. We are thus forced to see the Genetically modified foodstuffs, animals that are a step back. Fairnington leaves his subjects their Other animals are held by the look. Man becomes supposedly familiar with entirely new eyes. Like bred with more ribs, more muscle tissue in the dignity, their beauty, and their self-assurance; he aware of himself returning the look.” (Berger, 1980) visitors from another world, we are told of the right places from a marketing-related perspective, cautiously approaches them with the means of The animal motif, as also the flower still life, has Earth’s natural history and this story deals by no or with a resistance to particular illnesses – human his painting and presents them in an absolutely a long and quite checkered tradition in the history means with nature alone but rather, and perhaps beings have long intervened in the natural cycle of convincing manner. The tradition of animal of art. We think of the earliest animal paintings first and foremost, with the nature of human nature and changed the creation according to their and plant pieces is thus present, but we can also in the caves of Altamira and Lascaux, of Dürer’s beings, who are left out of the images but are, desires, and in the case of some animals and plants, apprehend that Mark Fairnington is also not hare or rhinoceros, of the Dutch painter Paulus nonetheless, omnipresent. according to their appetite. Mark Fairnington thus purely a painter of animals or plants. Potter in seventeen century with his wonderful Mark Fairnington paints what we, in the first paints what he sees and what he knows. What In this, his art is something particularly precious cows. Then there would be Maria Sibylla Merian instance, generally identify as nature. But he also results from this has nothing at all to do with a – the empathy and approach of the artist does with her pictures of plants and insects, the English paints specimens, for example from the natural romantic enthusiasm for nature but rather with not lead to a false identification with the subject. painter Edwin Landseer, who became famous in history museum, thus dead animals, and arranges a contemporary form of painting that pertains His images shimmer in the eye of the viewer, do the middle to the end of the nineteenth century them in tableaus in intimated glass cases. They directly to our lives. not allow themselves to be pinned down in an with his lifelike depictions of animals, and finally seem to be showpieces from the nineteenth Fairnington visibly does not occupy himself with unambiguous way, and thus precisely for this Courbet and Realism. A generation later, the century, a painted selection from natural history, documentary or photo-realistic painting, even reason, exert for us a special, nearly magical German painter Heinrich von Zügel came into exemplified by individual pieces. However, they when elements of these types of painting are fascination. The images of eyes, always in the the limelight with his depictions of domesticated are carefully arranged in a way different to by all means used. He paints in the way the he traditional form of the tondo, allow the viewer to animals. Finally, Expressionism metamorphosed how a museum would set them up. A veritable as a human being and painter sees things, with encounter the animal (and more rarely: human the animal into the human, closed a gap in the dramaturgy is created on the canvas, a chamber the small deviations that the eye performs, with being) eye-to-eye. Here, his artistic strategy distance between human and animal, not always piece that tells an entire story in one space. conscious, painterly gestures, therefore, as painting is perhaps most clearly manifest: we see the to the benefit of either. Fairnington’s subject is not, however, nature per occurs. The result is the artistic expression and observing eye, communicate with a counterpart – Mark Fairnington at first appears to follow se, but rather what we see as nature and how this essence of how we deal with nature, with the and ultimately find ourselves mirrored again in this in the tradition of these historical predecessors. seeing has changed over the centuries. creation, today. Far from being a moralist with eye. Magnificent painting that cannot be regarded His works show animals and plants that, at “Stubborn, muddle-headed, and narrow-minded an accusing finger, the painter states a transitory highly enough. first glance, might seem to come from a botany though she is, she has at last submitted, and her condition, a now that is subjected to constant or zoology textbook. The images often have master has succeeded in changing the soil components change, as is painting, but in contrast to this, one emblematic traits – plants and animals are depicted by means of chemical reactions, in utilizing slowly might assume that this change will hardly be a in isolation or in additions or juxtapositions on matured combinations, carefully elaborated crossings, positive one, even if approaches to it already exist. a neutral-monochrome background, and often in employing cuttings and graftings skilfully and In order to lift animals and plants, which stand as illuminated by an imaginary light, which suggests methodically, so that now he can make her put forth synonyms for the nature that surrounds us, out three-dimensionality where there is none. The the blossoms of different colours on the same branch, of anonymity, the artist adds his view of things, isolating of the motif facilitates a focused look invents new hues for her, and modifies at will the age- captured in the ductus of painting and/or through that is not diverted although it simultaneously old shapes of her plants. In short, he rough-hews her highlighting the animal or plant as something 6 7 Das beobachtende Auge Martin Stather „Die Augen des Tieres sind, wenn sie einen Menschen Licht beleuchtet, das eine Räumlichkeit andeu- te Kreuzungen, er gebraucht raffinierte Stecklinge sitive sein wird, auch wenn Ansätze dazu bereits betrachten, aufmerksam und wachsam. Das gleiche tet, wo keine ist. Durch das Isolieren des Motivs und methodische Pfropfungen – da blühen Blumen existieren. Um Tier und Pflanze, die synonym für Tier wird wahrscheinlich andere Tiere auf die gleiche wird ein fokussierter Blick ermöglicht, der nicht in verschiedenen Farben auf demselben Zweig, er die uns umgebende Natur stehen, aus der Ano- Weise ansehen. Für den Menschen ist kein besonderer abgelenkt wird, gleichzeitig jedoch eine Entrü- erfindet für sie neue Farbtöne, verwandelt nach seinem nymität herauszuheben, gibt der Künstler seine Blick reserviert. Doch keine andere Gattung als die ckung bewirkt, die Abstand hält vom Gegenstand Belieben die jahrhundertealte Form ihrer Pflanzen, Sicht der Dinge dazu, eingefangen im Duktus der des Menschen wird den Blick des Tieres als vertraut der Malerei zum Betrachter. Seltsam leblos wirkt schleift Blöcke ab, vollendet Entwürfe, drückt ihnen Malerei und/oder durch eine Hervorhebung von empfinden. Andere Tiere nimmt der Blick gefangen. das Lebendige nun, aus dem normalen Zeitablauf seinen Stempel auf und versieht sie mit dem Siegel Tier oder Pflanze als etwas jeweils Einzigartigem. Der Mensch jedoch wird sich, indem er den Blick herausgeschnitten, mit dem Auge seziert und neu seiner Kunst.“ (Huysmans, 1884) Keine Porträts im herkömmlichen Sinn sind diese erwidert, seiner selbst bewusst.“ (Berger, 1980) zusammengesetzt. So werden wir gezwungen, Denn auch die Natur ist nicht mehr das, was sie Bilder doch unverwechselbar in ihrer Darstellung Das Tierstück hat, wie auch das Blumenstilleben, vermeintlich Bekanntes mit gänzlich neuen Augen einmal war. Gentechnisch veränderte Lebensmittel, und in dem in ihren spürbaren Respekt, der sich in der Kunstgeschichte eine lange und durchaus zu sehen. Wie Besucher von einer anderen Welt Tiere, die mit mehr Rippen, mehr Muskelfleisch an im Abstandnehmen ausdrückt. Fairnington lässt wechselhafte Tradition.
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