Martin Mainer

6.4.2011 - 5.6.2011

We cannot but speak in superlatives about Martin Mainer. Although he sometimes looks for an adequate expression, a setting of expression, in his work and seems to be “floundering around”, he actually develops, quite logically, various aspects of the initiated work and brings them, in his partial conclusion, to a logical unravelling and consequences resulting from the “matter”. At the same time, his work is very compact and uniform from the painting point of view, consistently mapping possible solutions to the issues raised.
Already in the second half of the 1980s he was referred to as one of the most distinctive personalities of the upcoming generation, which – besides the virtually perfect command of painting technique and an extraordinary feeling for the colour of the image – experiments with psychotropic substances, which can open, in the state of the unaffected mind, undreamt-of spaces and consequences. What is important is not the fact that under the influence of these substances the painter actually does not create any work, but the state which can be denoted as a “border opening” and which becomes part of the painter’s consciousness. In conjunction with his perfect painting technique and the already mentioned feeling for colour, an ideal mix has been looming which creates, in its consequences, an original world of shapes, colours and imagination.
In his latest works, which to a certain extent are carried in two layers, Mainer opens up a certain setting, mapping various methods of treating the image area. Beside the works that were presented at his exhibition last year in the Prague Gallery of Critics (Galerie kritiků) and which reflect the altogether “traditional” painting of the picture, the Brno exhibition also offers excellent works which coherently experiment with not entirely common approaches to the work, and are based on transferring and imprinting the image area or on the mixing of paints applied to the image area. All this results in a no less interesting picture, taking advantage of hidden stimuli and hidden symbols developed in the spectator’s perception and imagination.