Markus Linnenbrink has worked with epoxy resin for over thirty years, and his intimate familiarity with the medium is evident in his deft manipulation of it. The work is a result of material and method, and Linnenbrink has developed distinct, intensely physical processes he calls “Cut,” “Drill,” “Drip,” and “Reverse” painting.
Color is at the center of Linnenbrink’s practice, and his gleeful dedication to creating spectra of unexpected hues is a driving force. Linnenbrink embraces, as he says, that “all interaction with color happens in and through the eye of the viewer. The same visual information then lands in receptors that are all molded by the whole life story of the individual that receives what is to be seen.”
Cindy Rucker writes, “Markus Linnenbrink is an artist who seeks to disrupt or transform our perceptions of beauty and provoke new ways of seeing and feeling. What makes beauty relevant to contemporary art is its ability to engage, to will others to connect, and to offer new perspectives and new ways of understanding…Linnenbrink’s work is about our ability to consider and accept things as long as we are open.”
Markus Linnenbrink (b. 1961, Dortmund, Germany) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany and the Gesamthochschule, Kassel, Germany. Recent solo exhibitions include Galería Max Estrella, Madrid, Spain; Fundación DIDAC, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Museum of New Art, Portsmouth, NH; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Taubert Contemporary, Berlin, Germany; Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA; and Maurizio Caldiorola Gallery, Monza, Italy. Linnenbrink has been included in group exhibitions at numerous international institutions including the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; Daegu National Museum, Daegu, South Korea; Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Germany; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany; San José Museum of Art, San José, CA; Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; and the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, Richmond, VA. His work may be found in the collections of the Clemens Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany; El Espacio 23, Miami, FL; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Ministry of Culture, The Hague, The Netherlands; Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; and elsewhere. Linnenbrink lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.