Bender Gallery is excited to announce, “Man and Machine”, a solo exhibition featuring new and pivotal works by European painter, Marco Reichert. Berlin-based Reichert is an emerging abstract painter whose current work challenges our ideas of what contemporary art is by using traditional painting techniques in conjunction with experimental “painting machines” to create multi-layered artworks. Reichert’s concept is new and unique, and his paintings exhibit a singular recognizable style. “Man and Machine” opens at the gallery on January 2, 2021 and runs through February 28, 2021. There will also be a virtual tour of the exhibition at Bender Gallery’s website.

Reichert uses a broad range of materials and imagery, both traditional and technological in creating his bold and thought- provoking work. His painting “robots” are integral to the presentation; each adheres to a programmed set of geometric rules and allows Reichert continuous access to the entire surface of the canvas. He first projects depth by the juxtaposition of paint and glue on the canvas. Often, Reichert glues the raw canvas on the floor to catch traces of prior paintings and to relate every single work to a much wider comprehensive ongoing process. His machine then supplies the compositional counterparts. The work is planned out yet also capricious as it develops during the creative process, and each image is fundamentally tied to the elements utilized. There is a dichotomy between spontaneous touches of ink or acrylic, the use of a spray and brushstrokes freely chosen by the artist and the more calculated geometrical forms, with regular line and rhythms that inhabit the surface of the painting and that seem almost mechanical because they were obtained by the use of digital media.

On one hand, Marco Reichert utilizes classic pictorial methodology linked to materials and painting in the way we traditionally think of. He traces out drawings and abstract, linear, fluid, and organic fields of color onto the raw canvas. On the other hand, there is an overtly technical-digital component through the construction of devices as “robot designers” made by the artist himself. This is a creative process in which the machine becomes the means for reaching visual results that would not be possible otherwise. Reichert almost becomes unified with his devices, touching the screen and manipulating the equipment in search of innovative marks and form.

The mostly large-scale paintings shown in the exhibition highlight the dichotomy of a dialogue between spontaneous touches of ink, oil or other media brushed or sprayed on by Reichert himself, and the more geometrical and mechanical forms, with regular rhythms and lines, that inhabit the surface of the canvas obtained through the use of digital media.

Marco Reichert (Berlin, 1979) lives and works in Berlin. Before earning his master’s degree in painting at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weißensee, Berlin, he studied information technology at Humboldt University, also in Berlin. It was at Humboldt that he decided that IT was not for him, so he pursued his passion in art. It was a natural progression to incorporate his background in technology and computers into his artwork.

Reichert has taken part in solo and group shows in such prestigious international institutes and galleries as the RIBOT gallery, Milan, Kunstverein Weinheim, Collection Baumgärtner, Weinheim (2014); Herbert-Gerisch Stiftung, Neumünster (2014); Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin (2011); Freies Museum Berlin, Berlin (2010); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2009), and many others.