Martin Maeller, Come Down to Us

Objects with death symbolism, traces of nature and human bodies: in Come Down to Us, Martin Maeller casts a somber look at the present.

Maeller's artistic works feed on personal experiences, pop culture, and mythology. For his multi-layered installations of sculptures, he uses everyday objects that have been subjected to a process of change in form and material. The industrial material silicone is shaped into a scythe, carbon fibers are woven into a net. Rubber shrink tubes recall drooping branches, an oversized denture imprint seems pressed into solid glass. This critical inventory is already given by the exhibition title Come Down to Us: The personal invitation to encounter someone or something evokes ambivalent notions of spiritual or material instances that remain open in their interpretation. Likewise, the place of encounter as such remains undefined. Belonging and identity show themselves to be sensitive and unsecured. The sculptures seem empty, used up, used - like fragments from ruins of a time no longer available. They create melancholic atmospheres of a world that has lost its familiarity. At the same time, Maeller's works attempt to open up possibilities, to transform the discourse of uncertainty into something productive and personal. In this way, they not only embody the conflict with the complex self, but also make it tangible.

Martin Maeller (b. 1990) lives and works in Berlin. He recently showed his work at Thomas Erben Gallery in New York, Studio Picknick in Berlin, Polansky Gallery in Prague/Brno, Basis in Frankfurt am Main, and Brandenburger Kunstverein in Potsdam, among others.