The Art Pledge
Portrait of Martin Dammann

Photo: Jan Brockhaus. Courtesy In Situ - fabienne leclerc and the artist.

Martin Dammann

Born in
1965
From
Friedrichshafen / Bodensee, Germany
Lives and works
Berlin, Germany
Represented by
In Situ - fabienne leclerc

UN goals

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I think the reason why they fascinate me so much it’s that all the fields, history, photography, fossils, art, are all traces of life that do not exist anymore.

Biography

Each of Martin Dammann’s projects starts by scanning vernacular photographs taken by soldiers during their leisure time that he enlarges and paints over with watercolors. The outcome are psychedelic compositions unveiling a hidden side of war populated by boredom and good-humored ambiance where soldiers are seen wearing women’s clothes, bringing up themes such as masculinity and cross-dressing. His characters, with their blurred faces, help build an eerie atmosphere inhabited by flimsy spectres of a bygone era, generally from World War I and World War II. Not all of his projects refer to conflicts, his main objective being to revisit archives to discover untold historical narratives.  


Probably the most obvious reference is to Gerhard Richter’s painting Uncle Rudi where he portrays his uncle in Wehrmacht army clothes. Richter and Dammann investigate Germany’s history, its fascist past, and the harrowing consequences of war.


His work is also evocative of expressionist paintings, particularly those by Edvard Munch in which the foreground and the background perfectly blend, distorting reality radically.

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