Exhibition title: Frozen Desire
Exhibiting Artist: Markus Weggenmann
Exhibition dates: 2009.10. 5 - 2009.11. 14
Exhibition venue: The Columns Gallery
63-14 Chungdamdong, Gangnamgu, Seoul, Korea
T. 822-3442-6301 www.columns.co.kr

The Columns Gallery is pleased to introduce the work of Swiss artist Markus Weggenmann for the first time to Korea. Weggenmann has been working in Zurich, Switzerland and Berlin, Germany for over 15 years perfecting his enigmatic and alluring style. His artworks are impossibly cold and yet we are somehow drawn to them, a paradoxical push and pull experience.

Weggenmann's paintings are an extravagant mixture of shapes and compositions, a fusion of vibrant colors and emerging figures. We see loops, twists, grates and squares which confound our sense of space and depth. Initially drafted by Weggenmann and executed with industrial materials, the works embody both a mechanical and human element. The artist's hand is visible in the organic and at times wobbly motif: compositions that exhibit his personal rhythm. However, the unmitigated colors and perfectly smooth surface of the finished aluminum panels denies human production. The effect of Weggenmann's works is a sort of frigid seduction that leaves the viewer feeling enchanted on her own.

'Frozen Desire' presents 14 monumental panels displaying adventurous and surprising applications of color, interweaving layers of motifs through which the viewer can see through. The impression of depth and the reflective surfaces make it difficult to fix the eye on the painting while the bright exuberant colors make it hard to look away. While his motifs are not quite abstract, Weggenmann's subject is not abstraction, but the abstract idea of painting.

Markus Weggenmann's most recent exhibitions have been at Kunsthalle in Bremerhaven, Germany; Fiedler Contemporary in Cologne, Germany; Galerie Mark Muller in Zurich, Switzerland and at the Kunstmuseum in Bonn, Germany