Markus Fräger

untitled / ohne Titel

Third solo exhibition by Cologne-based artist Markus Fräger (*1959) ... more >

Untitled is the third exhibition of the Cologne painter Markus Fräger in the gallery Biesenbach.

Thirteen new oil screens will be presented. The pictures by Markus Fräger (born 1959 in Hamm, lives and works in Cologne) resemble a symbiosis of earlier epochs and today. In passionate, virtuoso painting Fräger puts seemingly everyday snapshots: a baroque imagery that has arrived in the modern life. Markus Frägers' painting, which dominates anatomy, perspectivity and pictorial composition, oscillates between pleasure and irritation. In the viewer, his supposed everyday situations, conceived as photographic snapshots, trigger a certain perplexity.

Each person seems realistic to himself and is portrayed in an intentional manner, often as viewed through a windowpane from outside. One suspects, however, the different worlds and realities in which the characters can really be classified. Some of the protagonists are in direct eye contact with the viewer, as if looking into a camera. Others seem to be self-absorbed, acting alone with themselves and their messages. The people who interact with each other ultimately remain in separate spheres.

Markus Fräger documents in his pictures the momentary, changeable and temporally conditioned aspects of perception. Through his skilful play with light and shadow - like a gloomy-romantic atmosphere - one feels drawn into the paintings. An argument begins, because mysteriously stir and stimulate the characters to unlock their secrets.

Markus Fräger's paintings are in numerous private and public collections, e.g. Middle Rhine Museum, Koblenz; Museum am Dom, Würzburg; Municipal Museum, Miltenberg; Ines and Jürgen Graf Foundation for Art, Culture, Industrial Design, Cologne.