Martin Mannig - Double Bottom Varieté

Gaa Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Dresden-based artist Martin Mannig. Double Bottom Varieté opens on Friday, August 10, and remains on view through September 4.

Double Bottom Varieté is a spirited fusion of Mannig’s archetypal cast of folk figures set within the theater of painting. Utilizing the satirical, dramatic, cheeky and improvised conventions of Vaudeville to animate his cast of ornery and benevolent characters, Mannig draws largely from traditional folk traditions in his native East German Erzgebirge region. Juxtaposing Frankenstein figures composed of legs, limbs, fragments, and extremities of animal, human, dendrological, inanimate forms, Mannig presents an amalgam of singularities drawn together to create trans-species beings coexisting in omni-dimensional landscapes. In this wonderland of the whimsical, dramatic and absurd, Mannig illuminates a universe of parallel worlds rich in inversions, subversions, and double meanings.

Mannig’s multi-directional working process typically begins with the extensive organizational system built out of his drawings. Through constructing a cast of figures- mischievous rats, malevolent onlookers, naïve mice, sultry cats, caregivers, gnomes, animated objects and living landscapes, his works on paper are re-rendered and incorporated into his paintings as new narratives. In his paintings and works on paper, Mannig lets loose of any preconceived notions of narrative and opens up the possibility to see something anew and to value curiosity, if even bordering on mischief and experiment over the logical and known. Mannig’s worlds are hybrids, transformed, and metamorphosed to make the familiar foreign and the foreign familiar.

Martin Mannig lives and works in Dresden, Germany. His work mines the icons of a variety of cultural constructs and subverts their prescribed powers in malleable paintings that are simultaneously dear and sinister. Mannig was awarded the Caspar-David-Friedrich-Preis in 2004. Select solo exhibitions include Folkfuturism, Städtische Galerie Dresden, Dresden; Folkfuturism, Aishonanzuka, Hong Kong; Looking Glass World, Galerie Gebr. Lehmann, Dresden; Martin Mannig, Malerei, Caspar-David- Friedrich-Zentrum, Greifswald; and Broken Romance, Galerie Gebr. Lehmann, Berlin. His work was included in Takashi Murakami’s Superflat Collection ―From Shōhaku and Rosanjin to Anselm Kiefer―, Yokohama Art Museum, Yokohama, and publications include the monographs Martin Mannig MMVI-MMXV, editor Andrew Seidl & Galerie Gebr. Lehmann (2016) and Martin Mannig Tokyo (hardcore wonderland), publisher SALZ Verlag (2012).