Marcus WeberKrazy Dog Moon Kat

Desolate and romantic – KRAZY DOG MOON KAT – that is the title of the book accompanying Marcus Weber’s exhibition at the Villa Merkel in Esslingen, which presents for the first time a broad selection of the paintings of the artist, born in Stuttgart in 1965 and living in Berlin. They are narrative, tongue-in-cheek pictures, allusive group portraits and urban landscapes with grotesque reformulations of social orders and/or with individual characters sharpened to the point of caricature. Painterly refinement flashes out, so that some works can be read as capriccios, desolate and romantic at once. And the great father figures of painting always resonate – Marcus Weber’s enthusiasm for artists such as James Ensor or Philip Guston is unmistakable. The sum of it all is a grotesque mixture that mocks every hierarchy and relies as much on productive bridges into the realm of the comics of a George Herriman as on art history, for Weber is a genre painter in the best tradition, one who paints pictures of society. Idiosyncratic communities are brought into the picture – solitary men at bar counters, creatures reading art magazines, characters lounging in designer furniture, or café scenes in which masked figures come together – but above all the greatest attention is paid to delicate details as well, such as three scoops of ice cream or a slice of the cake known as Donauwelle. As a subtle and multi-layered response to current political and social conditions, these works easily outstrip the so-called new history painting, which for the most part exhausts itself in copying press photographs. Accordingly, on the occasion of his first solo exhibition in the USA, the New York Times (2 May 2018) credited him with having taken a surprisingly topical path by imitating that in real life which cannot be got behind.

Exhibition:
Villa Merkel Galerie der Stadt Esslingen, 24/6 – 19/8/2018