Works

Exhibition view

In the spring I visited Manfred Mayerle, whom I had met just a year earlier at art Karlsruhe, in Munich and in his studio in Jachenau. We had arranged for an exhibition during the Art Week in Berlin in September 2023.

For this presentation, works had to be selected, that was one reason for the visit, the other of course and that was much more exciting for me, to learn how Manfred Mayerle works. The artistic fields in which he moves are quickly outlined. On the one hand, there are the architecture-related design projects, then painting and drawing. The latter was immediately a topic at the breakfast after arriving in Munich. We sat in his light-flooded living / working room and there he showed me his drawing place where he starts the day every morning. With a horizontal line I imagine, to it comes then the next and so on, until then the vertical ones are added, a grid of lines, a net builds up. And this is not monochrome, the color plays a prominent role. Like an artist in front of the canvas, sometimes steps back, considers, comes back and continues, so the mostly smaller format drawings arise with Mayerle. Here, too, one can sense a weighing and a deliberation. For not every line is drawn all the way through, interruptions are unmistakable, sometimes they are executed freehand, then again with a ruler. And another point suggests itself when thinking about these drawings. Manfred Mayerle works primarily serially in this field. Every morning he starts anew, time and space automatically come into consideration, and if the artist can keep his series going, there is also a hint of the infinite.

In the studio in Jachenau, then the painting. Manfred Mayerle had begun as a figurative painter, of which absolutely nothing is visible today. His paintings, monochrome, immaculate color areas, only on one edge, flourishing color strokes, not unlike frequency recordings in a technical device. Looking at the finished works, one does not immediately conclude that the lines also play an important role here, this becomes clear when one knows the work processes. Manfred Mayerle sets up the white canvas vertically and then lets acrylic paint run from top to bottom at intervals of a few millimeters. A multicolored vertical network of lines builds up. This is then painted over 20, 30 or more with monochrome layers of paint, covered. Except for perhaps 1 cm at the bottom edge, the lines remain visible. Through the multiple layers of color Manfred Mayerle succeeds in his monochrome works to give a warmth and depth in which the viewer is invited to dive.

Matthias Fuhrmann in August 2023