Marcel Eichner Germany, b. 1977

Marcel Eichner (1977, Siegburg, Germany) is an established contemporary German artist presently based in Berlin and recognized for his expressive work on painting. He attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1998 to 2004.

Eichner intends to represent quotidian scenes as they would seem in a world without social norms to constraint our most complex and repressed emotions. He is preoccupied with capturing interiority - "not how things look or should be, but how they feel like."

The artist chooses to render spaces where he has developed memories and personal associations, generally in interior household settings. Through a dark imaginative lens, the artist reacts to the feelings and thoughts that result from being in a familiar surrounding. His early figurative works are characterized by a clever and unconventional interplay of windows, doors, jagged lines, contrasting colors, and mundane objects. In this strange nightmarish fantasy, humans become monster-like forms and impressions of their own personal struggles.

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Eichner is presently pushing the boundaries of his work to experiment with a more abstract style where figures have been translated to purely evocative forms. He aims to break with tradition and experience his art with a fresh perspective. In his most recent paintings, he first applies an ink wash to the canvas to create a sense of immediacy and fleetness. Malformed creatures and vibrant loose lines float in space, producing a tense and chaotic scene, yet with a hint of humor.

In contrast to his experimentation with style, one other element, aside from subject matter, that has remained consistent throughout his artistic process, is his use of word and text within the composition. Instead of painting what he observes or envisions, Eichner believes he can also just simply write it. Like the paintings themselves, through an interweaved series of associations, he often integrates words and ideas that come to mind when observing or remembering a particular memento or instant his life

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This wildly imaginary and distorted world, whether figurative or abstract, is reflective of our constant endeavor to come to terms with reality. They are visualizations of the artist's environment, memories and states of being - a mirror of his subconscious.