MARCUS SCHAEFER
Name: Marcus Schaefer
Age: 34
Birthplace: Bad Soden- Salmünster, Germany
Home: Paris, France
Disciplines: Photography, drawing, sculpting
Momente in Gesellschaft, 2021, Charcoal on paper (200 gsm)
What is the link between the different mediums you use to create?
Every medium has its own charm and potential. Photography is like a time capsule, it grants you the magical tool to go back and forth in time, and makes reality look like a timeless place in the void. Film offers the same and more. Drawings help me understand and guide my photographic path to the next level - I consider them to be some sort of umbilical cord that connects those two worlds. I want to photograph what I can‘t draw and I want to draw what I can‘t photograph - therefore, my photographs more and more become a hybrid form of a drawing. Finally, sculptures allow you to dive into the 3D world and create figures of your own imagination where only your rules apply. All media are aesthetically in sync and follow the same path to finding my true artistic identity.
Which topic does your work focus on?
I put the color black at the heart of my work, using it as a central component of my visual messaging. It’s like entering an upside-down realm that is much more sensitive, abstract and intimate than the world of color. It opens up entire new avenues of escape and expression. In my eyes, black is the embodiment of dichotomy: on the one hand, it is very dominant, strong and intimidating, and on the other, vulnerable, melancholic and sensitive. Black is multidimensional, seems endless and makes me think of the dark, infinite universe, black holes, gravity and the beginning of life. It’s mesmerizing and makes me reflect on myself as if I’m staring into a mirror. Black is absorbing and seems to come across as very depressing, frustrating and dead, but is actually extremely sexy, vibrant and uplifting.
How do you define your artistic search and practice in three words?
Identity - Freedom - Commitment.
Which relationships is your work about?
My work is about the complex relationship between being human and living in society. Being human essentially means having your own reality, whereas living in a society means living in a determined reality fabricated by humans. I think of photography as the perfect tool to create your very own interpretation of reality - for me personally - a reality that is about beauty, art and aesthetics, and not necessarily technical perfection or intending to shoot the exact likeness of someone or something.
How does your work reflect our current times?
I think the question of finding your "identity" and the complex relationship of being human (no matter if feminine, masculine or non-binary) and living in a "standardized" society fabricated by humans is more current than ever before.
Untitled portrait, 2020