Michael Mattern

Michael Mattern (* 1946 in Husum ) is a German visual artist who lives in Itzehoe . In his neo-constructivist work groups, he examines the technical logic of form and function of our time.

The work

Since machines determine today's life more than landscapes, interiors, battles or Christian legends, Mattern allows the form schemes and functional logics of the machines around us to be pictured. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the focus of Michael Mattern's work has been on constructive relationships between forms, which are determined by the relationship between people and their high-tech environment. His motifs: deliberately and precisely chosen sections of technical equipment and facilities unchanged in line and proportion. The spectrum ranges from motors and thrusters to cutting devices and photocells through to microchips. In his investigations into highly complex contexts, which are usually difficult to understand for the technician, he translates new forms, which are taken from the world of today's technology, into plays of colors and forms that focus on the high level of abstraction between technology and people. Humans, on the other hand, as Mattern's works make clear to the viewer, often use these techniques without any knowledge of their respective form and function logics. Mattern also takes account of the reflection on the perfectionist claim of a visually largely smooth, flawless world of surfaces, designs and objects through the use of airbrush technology and industrial paints applied to the surface.

Work process and work groups

In the search for new forms that correspond to the forms of life itself, Mattern submits to strict rules. He examines his creative possibilities within a fixed 'construction grid' that he has specified himself on the basis of formal standards and regulations. In the analyzes, analysis montages and compositions, the differentiation of the implementation becomes particularly visible. Simple, abstract shapes such as squares, circles, ovals and rectangles as well as elementary principles of artistic design such as horizontal, vertical and diagonal, light / dark and small / large are subtly and serially varied in this group of works. Recycling is a fundamental strategy for dealing with aging and obsolescence that occurs in all areas of life. Beyond pure recycling, aging represents a permanent process of change in which the industry is strongly oriented towards the recycling cycles of nature. In the recycling work, Mattern finds an addition for his creative possibilities on the basis of a form logic, which underlies the construction plans and functional schemes of machines and technical devices of all kinds. At the same time, the recycling exhibits have a self-referential, documentary character.

Diaphanous constructivism

Diaphan constructivism is a term coined by Bazon Brock . It describes the transparency of Mattern's visual worlds, in which visual knowledge and images of knowledge are equally implicated and which deal with technology in the external appearance as well as with internal development. It was also Brock who put Mattern's work in the square “Duchamp, Léger, Klapheck, Technik”. Mattern himself documents his relation to classical modernism by dealing with z. B. Piet Mondrian and Roy Lichtenstein, more often Kandinsky, Malewitsch, in more recent works such as the Hamburger Kabinett , also specifically Picasso, Braque, Gris and Delaunay.

Exhibitions (selection)

• 2008: DEUS EX MACHINA, single exhibition, 20 years Kunstverein Rotenburg / W.
• 2007: COMPOSED & CONSTRUCTED, group show with Otto Christian Schade + Hanny Kühne, Galerie am Hafen, Flensburg
• 2005: ICONOGRAPHY OF TECHNOLOGY, individual exhibition, Wenzel Hablik Museum, Itzehoe, curator Bazon Brock
• 2003: KUNSTPAUSE, individual exhibition, Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum Hildesheim
• 2001: KNOWLEDGE IMAGES, one man show ART Frankfurt / M. by Galerie Hohmann, Hamburg
• 2000: SHAPES AND FUNCTIONS - DESIGN BY MICHAEL MATTERN, individual exh. by the Schleswig-Holstein Museum Office with catalog, Wenzel Hablik Museum Itzehoe, Villa Flath, Bad Segeberg, Reinbek Castle near Hamburg
• 1999: CONSTRUCT - CONCRETE - group show with J.Eberhard, R.Oehler and N.Sapone, WELTI modern art, Zurich
• 1999: THE POWER OF AGE - STRATEGIES OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP, together with hiking exhib. the "Foundation for Art and Culture eV, Bonn"; 3rd station: Gallery of the City of Stuttgart Archive from 2005, 2nd station: Kunstmuseum Bonn
• 1998: THE POWER OF AGING - Opening and 1st stop: German Historical Museum, Berlin
• 1997: ANALYZES + COMPOSITIONS, single exhibition, Galerie Pohlhammer, Steyr / Austria
• 1997: ART INNOVATION, single exh. for the opening of the Itzehoe Innovation Center - IZET
• 1996: KONSTRUKTIVISMUS HEUTE, single exhibition, Prinesshof Itzehoe district museum, as part of the exhibition: Evening salon with Bazon Brock.
• 1994: DIAPHANIC CONSTRUCTIVISM, individual exhibition, Schering Kunstverein Berlin

Literature (selection)

• Prof. Anna Zika (Ed.): Image worthiness: Image knowledge and knowledge images , in: The barbarian as a cultural hero , Bazon Brock III, Collected Writings 1991–2002, DuMont Art and Literature Verlag 2002, pp. 768–775.
• Knowledge pictures - Constructive painting by Michael Mattern , catalog Galerie Hohmann, Hamburg, 2001.
• Forms and functions - Constructive things from Michael Mattern , catalogs of the museums in Schleswig-Holstein No. 48, 2000; with texts by Elisabeth Fuchs-Belhamri, Prof. Dr. Bazon Brock, Michael Mattern, Itzehoe 2000.
• Recycling , BB, article in: Bazon Brock (Ed.) On behalf of the Foundation for Art and Culture eV: The Power of Age - Strategies of Mastery , exhibition catalog, DuMont Art and Literature Verlag, Berlin, Bonn, Stuttgart 1998.

Web links

• http://www.art-mattern.de