Markus Amm, born in 1969, German artist Markus Amm creates photograms, sculptures, paintings, collages and drawings that riff upon the language of modernist abstraction. Executed in 2002, the present work layers tape, enamel, edding and pencil on plywood, creating a witty tension between its rigorous geometric composition – evocative of Russian Constructivism and Bauhaus design – and its base, ephemeral materials. ‘You can’t act as though modernism can be reinvented’, argues Amm. ‘… Humour and irony are perhaps a good way to approach it.

I wasn’t interested in holy values that lay claim to a final and timeless beauty. I don’t believe in that; on the contrary. When I approach modernism it means breaking with all these clichés.’ Over the past decade, Amm has staged solo shows at institutions including the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, the Sammlung Lenikus, Vienna and the Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel.

Markus Amm is a contemporary German artist who was born in 1969.

Solo exhibitions of Amm’s work have been held at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart in Germany (2010) and Kunsthaus Baselland in Basel, Switzerland (2017). He also participated in group exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen; Bundekunsthalle, Bonn; and Foundation Thalie, Brussels, amongst many others.