Martin Fenne

textile reliefs

10 January – 07 February 2016

Martin Fenne (1964) creates textile reliefs with shiny, overlapping strips of fabric. In the past he used this technique to produce works like the Sleepers series, with human figures lying or sitting on matrasses. In his present work he moved on to a more neutral subject: cardboard boxes that he constructs from satin piping according to the same labor-intensive method. As the seated or lying people are now missing, the image has distanced itself from a direct identification. The attention now shifts between the concrete shape of the box and the abstract structure of the horizontal and vertical lines produced by the strips of fabric.

The image is composed in a color scheme with either subtly shading or strongly contrasting colours, the gleam of the shiny satin enhances this effect. Martin Fenne bases his works on boxes he finds in the streets. They are the by-product of a new economic reality in which an ever increasing number of goods are sent and transported via the internet. Cut open, ripped, folded flat and stripped of their content they still hold traces of their first, economic history. By subsequently folding, stacking, moving and combining the boxes a new image is created, with implicit references to social, political and ecological issues.