James Fuentes is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Marcel Eichner. Eichner’s paintings depict free-associative visualizations of the artist’s environment, memories, fantasies, and emotional states. Eichner signals the simultaneity of these various ways of experiencing reality by means of a consistent leitmotif that suffuses his work: the evocation of multiple picture planes.

By using ink as his primary pigment medium, the artist accomplishes several goals consistent with his purpose. Since ink is fast drying, he can work as quickly as associations occur to him without disrupting the immediacy of the aesthetic act. The inherent thinness of the medium naturally lends itself to an integration of figure and field
consistent with the layering of various levels of consciousness his work reflects. Combined with its quick drying properties, ink’s potential for transparency renders it especially conducive to the multiplication of picture planes that recurs throughout this body of work.

For Eichner’s first exhibition with the gallery, he accelerates this mode of painting in both content and scale. Associations from sources external to the artist himself and from his own mental imaginations of memory or invention gradually comprise associations between constituent elements of the paintings as they develop. In this way, the works both depict and symbolize the process of their own creation.

Marcel Eichner was born in Siegburg, Germany in 1977. He studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany under Jörg Immendorff. Eichner joined James Fuentes in 2015, this is his first exhibition with the gallery.

Previous solo shows include exhibitions at McKee Gallery of New York (2013, 2014) and Contemporary Fine Arts of Berlin (2010, 2012, 2014).