Starschnitt
14.06. – 19.07.2014
Kai Matsumiya Gallery, 153 ½ Stanton St, NYC 10002 

Kai Matsumiya is pleased to announce Starschnitt by Markues. The exhibition marks Markues’ debut in the United States in addition to being hir first solo exhibition scheduled for June 14th (7- 9:30pm).

Starschnitt, translated as “star cut”, refers to life-sized cut-out posters of celebrities by Bravo magazine, a popular teen-magazine within the German-speaking world. Each issue contained a Starschnitt fragment, forming a larger composite image when all pieces were collected. Markues adapts, in a literal fashion, Starschnitt into two artistic strategies: the deconstruction of the ProtoArtStar and the practice of collage cuts.

The gallery’s storefront window will be covered with a star-shaped decal of a nuclear family thereby transforming the interior space into a camera obscura; this opaque lens is shut. The resulting circumstance reveals a more variable situation inside than the reversed image from the outside. Light originates from two sources of projection: one light- projection piece assembles recent collages from the ongoing ‘How to Be Gay?’ series and from the video ‘Meine Welt’ (My World).
‘How to be Gay?’ (2013/14) gathers paintings and photographs of men touching each other. They are sliced, recomposed, opening up a new undefined pictorial space beyond the facade of central perspective and desires already known. Mimicking camp guestures of abstract-expressionist paintings, Markues touches, glazes and reconnects the fragments with spills of nailpolish. Hir colour palette is not intended to arrive with a metaphysical overload of meaning, rather with the light erotics of the names of the nailpolish itself—‘sweet as candy’, ‘hey, nude!’, ‘open your heart’, ‘charming’, ‘flirt with me‘, ‘can’t get enough’, ‘let’s get lost’.

A kitchen showroom is the set for the video ‘Meine Welt‘ (2012, 19:22 min). The artist dons a mask and flamboyant eyelashes while reenacting an interview situation of a prominent art star. The monologue is based on an article published by the widely circulated German newspaper Die Zeit. The story is built from an interview with a renowned photographer which draws a lively, personal and mythical picture of the said individual’s recent works and day to day affairs. It is careful to note that ‘Meine Welt‘ is not an individuated accusation. Markues retypes the article in direct speech and creates a queer overlay of two artists’ identities— a crack occurs along the lines of gender and class, revealing a fundamental shattering of seemingly neutral satellite pictures of the Earth.