Honerla‘s paintings insinuate into the viewer’s life, surprisingly. They lead us to new terrains whose existence we had just suspected. They invite us to spend our days and nights with them. They are like a good friend.
a good friend
Lichter
2023 | Lacquer on canvas
80 x 80 cms
• born in Dresden
• Evening course in painting at Dresden University of Fine Arts
• Studies in painting and sculpture at Düsseldorf Art Academy
• Master student of Prof. Tony Cragg
Contact
Markus Honerla
Gustav-Freytag-Str. 13
01277 Dresden, Germany
+49 172 4406569
The Sea
Be the gleam of my eye
When the night comes on
And give me your wildly pounding hearth
And the aching fury of your waves
Against the storm and against the icy grip of time.
So that my longing shines in the riddles of your depths
And flies up with the chants of the floating shore.
Sabine Aurich-Rogge exhibition opening, 2022
Markus Honerla’s abstract painting is characterised by his intense engagement in sculpture and painting during his studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, as a master student of Tony Cragg, as well as later in photography and digital image processing. What really fascinates him about painting is the immediacy of real time. Nothing can be limited, blown up or repeated as if using a computer. Painting requires maximum skills. His artistic experiences in several genres give his work its distinctive style. Relievos consisting of fine parallel lines reveal layers and structures moving apart from one context and being slid over others. These structures and fragments allow for different perspectives on various worlds at just one look.
The Frankfurt Art Experience, 2020
It’s all about colour
Markus Honerla has worked in several genres,
but what really got him is painting.
Tony Cragg, Richard Serra, Magdalena Jetelová, Bruce Nauman, Donald Judd – when Markus Honerla enumerates the names of people who influenced him during his studies at Düsseldorf Art Academy, it sounds like a personnel list of Documenta during the 1980s and 90s. In Düsseldorf, the first division team of artists had gathered, they were teaching at the academy, making exhibitions. Before, Honerla had attended the evening painting course in Dresden, and not just compared to that, Düsseldorf must have seemed to him like enormous freedom: openness between the different genres of art – from photography to stage design – instead of physical separation between the subjects painting and sculpture, open-mindedness for all currents of this world instead of regional echo chambers.
While Honerla was increasingly focusing on the field of sculpturing when he lived in Düsseldorf, today painting is central to him. That there had been a long chapter of digital image processing in Berlin during the 00s should also be mentioned. What we see now is flawless flatware for the wall, created in the classical way using brush and paint. The beginning is marked by one specific painting: “ASA NISI MASA” from 2007. It is one of the first paintings Markus Honerla brought onto the canvas after about 20 years of abstinence from painting. A start going along with the insight that the contact between artist and canvas is immediate and direct. Whatever appears on it comes up in real time and is neither limited by a computer’s processing power, nor by the usual technical effort typical for the sculpturing scene of the 1990s. Compared to that, painting is a downright organic way of working with minimum use of resources, but still requiring maximum skills in order to give a sentiment shape and colour. In case of Honerla, structure also plays a role. In his strictly black and white series “Land”, it is decisive: Relievos of fine parallel lines create forms, widen into landscapes. In his études, however, the paint appears as if cut out of paper strips. In general, Honerla quite often uses collage looks, but he creates them using paint only. Filmogen lacquers, by the way, put on top of one another, building several layers. And it is exactly this technique that seems to close the circle – to sculpturing, when Honerla understands the individual applied paints as delimited layers and juxtaposes matt and shiny surfaces in an extremely exact way. As well as to digital image processing, when forms detach from their context, suddenly, and are being laid over others by Honerla.
Ultimately, it is all about paint and colour. Not as a texture, but as red, yellow, and blue. The three elementary colours creating all those brilliant paintings.
Siiri Klose, 2018
![Fenêtre ouverte de Matisse II - The artist Henri Matisse continuously developed the motif of the window as an interface between the inner and outer realms throughout his life. It plays a key role in his work, not least because the colors of nature penetrate through the window into the interior of the studio. Art historian Shirley Blum examines more than fifty works of art-beginning with the painting Studio Under the Eaves (1903) and ending with Chapel of the Rosary in Vence (1951)-to trace in detail the significance of the recurring motif in Matisse's work. In this respect, her explanations not only trace the development of his window paintings, but at the same time open up an overview of the stages of this artist who created some of the most innovative abstract paintings of the 20th century. Fauvism is assigned to a style of painting in art history. It arose from a movement within the French avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century. Fauvism forms the first movement of classical modernism. The main representatives of the initially reviled movement were Henri Matisse, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck. They were joined by Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet, Kees van Dongen, Othon Friesz, and Georges Braque.[1][2] Some art historians also include Henri Manguin, Charles Camoin, Jean Puy, and Louis Valtat among the Fauves, and, according to more recent trends, Georges Rouault.[3] In the Fauvist paintings, the coloring was no longer intended to serve the illusionistic representation of an object. The painterly statement arose from the harmony of the color surfaces. Typical for most of the works are their bright colors. However, considerations of the representation of space are just as essential to the composition of the painting.[4][1] The roots of Fauvism stem from Impressionism, but the goal was to counteract the fleeting nature of Impressionist paintings in order to give the work more duration (French durée). Fauvism did not have its own theory or manifesto. According to a more recent view, Fauvism had similarities with Expressionism.](images/honerla-bilder-2021-09-1890.jpg)
![Fenêtre ouverte de Matisse I - The artist Henri Matisse continuously developed the motif of the window as an interface between the inner and outer realms throughout his life. It plays a key role in his work, not least because the colors of nature penetrate through the window into the interior of the studio. Art historian Shirley Blum examines more than fifty works of art-beginning with the painting Studio Under the Eaves (1903) and ending with Chapel of the Rosary in Vence (1951)-to trace in detail the significance of the recurring motif in Matisse's work. In this respect, her explanations not only trace the development of his window paintings, but at the same time open up an overview of the stages of this artist who created some of the most innovative abstract paintings of the 20th century. Fauvism is assigned to a style of painting in art history. It arose from a movement within the French avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century. Fauvism forms the first movement of classical modernism. The main representatives of the initially reviled movement were Henri Matisse, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck. They were joined by Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet, Kees van Dongen, Othon Friesz, and Georges Braque.[1][2] Some art historians also include Henri Manguin, Charles Camoin, Jean Puy, and Louis Valtat among the Fauves, and, according to more recent trends, Georges Rouault.[3] In the Fauvist paintings, the coloring was no longer intended to serve the illusionistic representation of an object. The painterly statement arose from the harmony of the color surfaces. Typical for most of the works are their bright colors. However, considerations of the representation of space are just as essential to the composition of the painting.[4][1] The roots of Fauvism stem from Impressionism, but the goal was to counteract the fleeting nature of Impressionist paintings in order to give the work more duration (French durée). Fauvism did not have its own theory or manifesto. According to a more recent view, Fauvism had similarities with Expressionism. The motif of the window in painting has a long tradition. Jan van Eyck, for example, showed us an idealized outside world in "The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin" in 1436, Albrecht Dürer's self-portrait of 1498 opens a small section into an invented nature, and Edward Hopper thematized either the view from outside to inside or from inside to outside in almost all his works in the 20th century. The window motif is especially relevant today in the time of environmental problems to be solved and transformations on the horizon, showing the viewer the threshold from the inside to the outside. Gallery Berghout has begun a series of exhibitions on nature, which now reveals positions from the threshold of the window in this exhibition "Unforeseen" by Markus Honerla. The works are a contemporary interpretation of the views from a supposedly safe inner world into the outside world, which becomes strange to us. Are these window works a metaphor for the current state in nature and a view into an unforeseen world? Humanity is on the threshold of a future that demands a rethinking of our habits. The windows and their views into the outside world show for each of us a different position and a multi-layered panorama of individual reality. Markus Honerla's picturesque view out of his windows suggests the diversity of tasks that nature demands of us. Despite the different perspectives and perceptions for the outside world and nature, we all have to come together to preserve our planet in a sustainable way. Honerla's windows open us to glimpses of the unexpected. Thresholds allow us to cross over to the outside, to finally gain the respectful wide and overview. Gloria Berghout, July 2021](images/honerla-bilder-2021-08-1890.jpg)
![Bouquet - Flowers Still life In the history of European art tradition, still life refers to the depiction of dead or motionless objects (flowers, fruits, dead animals, glasses, instruments, etc.)[1] Their selection and grouping was based on content (often symbolic) and aesthetic aspects. These representations developed into an independent genre of painting at the beginning of the 17th century in the Baroque period. A distinction is made according to the objects depicted; this results in the sub-types of flower, book, fish, fruit, breakfast, hunting, kitchen, market, musical instrument, vanitas or weapon still lifes. The transitions to the genres of interior, animal or genre are sometimes fluid. The term stil leven (Dutch: stil = motionless and leven = existence) for a painting is found for the first time around 1650 in a Dutch inventory.](images/honerla-bilder-2021-05a-1890-1.jpg)
![Bouquet - Flowers Still life In the history of European art tradition, still life refers to the depiction of dead or motionless objects (flowers, fruits, dead animals, glasses, instruments, etc.)[1] Their selection and grouping was based on content (often symbolic) and aesthetic aspects. These representations developed into an independent genre of painting at the beginning of the 17th century in the Baroque period. A distinction is made according to the objects depicted; this results in the sub-types of flower, book, fish, fruit, breakfast, hunting, kitchen, market, musical instrument, vanitas or weapon still lifes. The transitions to the genres of interior, animal or genre are sometimes fluid. The term stil leven (Dutch: stil = motionless and leven = existence) for a painting is found for the first time around 1650 in a Dutch inventory.](images/honerla-bilder-2021-05b-1890.jpg)
