Ausstellung „Auftunen und Peppen"

The drawings of Atelier Goldstein artist Markus Schmitz bear witness to a complex and imaginative linear language. In their clear yet ornamental execution, they recall leaded glass windows or the defining contours of medieval woodcuts. Lines and text, rendered in a distinctive, self-developed typography, condense into visual nodes.

Within the intricate drawings, motifs such as people, landscapes, vehicles, and organic forms emerge. The lines create a tension between deliberate composition and intuitive flow. This playful reworking, adding to, and reimagining—an ongoing “tuning up and embellishing” of motifs—forms the conceptual starting point for the exhibition’s title.

Many of the drawings serve as the basis for cut-outs. Here, Markus Schmitz works with the technique of paper cutting, which he has developed into a contemporary means of expression. In a kind of two-stage process of abstraction, precise paper works are created whose negative cut-out spaces render the motif or narrative only as a trace.

The shadows cast by the works within the space are not merely a side effect but an integral component of the composition: as projection, they expand the picture plane into the surrounding space. In the exhibition, this principle is intensified, with the projected shadow itself becoming the central element in the form of an installation.

Markus Schmitz, born in Cologne in 1980, lives and works in Frankfurt am Main. His works have been shown in numerous exhibitions, most recently in 2025 at Galerie L’Atlas in Paris.

Atelier Goldstein is a space for the production of contemporary art in Frankfurt am Main. Founded in 2001, it represents artists whose access to art and its institutions is not taken for granted.

Since 2013, Atelier Goldstein has operated its own exhibition space, the Goldstein Gallery, hosting exhibitions, artist residencies, talks, workshops, and concerts.