Matti Braun, Ku Lak

Esther Schipper is pleased to present our Online Viewing Room dedicated to Ku Lak, Matti Braun's sixth solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition includes 16 works from a new series of silk paintings and approximately 25 new glass works, the latter presented on three circular plinths designed by the artist.

Matti Braun was born in 1968 in Berlin, Germany. He studied at the Städelschule, Frankfurt and at the Braunschweig University of Art (HBK). The artist lives and works in Cologne.

Braun's practice is characterized by a constant negotiation between concrete references and general allusions, between poetic ephemerality and an uncanny sense of visceral immediacy. His work investigates the unexpected, often little known, effects of cross-cultural dynamics, making visible patterns of artistic migrations and cultural misrecognitions.

The new silks—with their progressions of light and dark greys—constitute a culmination of this series. Braun returns to the limitations of a black and white color scheme explored in his early batiks but with the luxuriance of his recent series on smooth, finely woven silk.

At the same time, the greyscale of this new series also obliquely refers to Braun's interest in concrete which he has incorporated in individual works and also in his exhibition architecture. In addition, the grey modulations may recall the coloring of black and white found photographs which have played an important role in the artist's practice.

While the reduced color scheme explored in Ku Lak highlights the tension between seriality and uniqueness, the works' apparent effortlessness and formal simplicity betray a process that seeks to exert a great amount of control but still entails uncontrollable outcomes.