Author Description

The non-figurative pictures by Mark Lammert reject anything narrative. He very early gave up the stretcher frame but without foreswearing the canvas; he works in series and since 1998 increasingly in small formats. His coal and graphite drawings – in part shot through with colour and always on heavy handmade paper – are mostly anatomically motivated studies that tend towards landscape and can be read as ciphers for nature. The picture groups reproduced in this book – Manover, Sammlung and Nach Marey, etc. – are figure fragments of compact colour concentrations that are interpretable as condensed drawings. Lammert operates with varying colour palettes (Floaters), switching, e.g., from a colour climate of old-masterly pieces to the more garish hues of modern ones. The paint layers that emerge point to the act of painting itself and prompt the viewer to explore what lies underneath.