My work highlights the unconscious filters that shape perception: the invisible yet powerful filters of associations, affects and memories, which are structured by social life and history as much as by the life of the soul.
My work highlights the unconscious filters that shape perception: the invisible yet powerful filters of associations, affects and memories, which are structured by social life and history as much as by the life of the soul.
My painting practice translates these liminal layers, legible or illegible, into the medium and materiality of paint. I seek to make them tangible and relatable on the contained painting surface. Each is a unique condensation of this process.
I paint ambiguous ‘inscapes’, which are inhabited by enigmatic scenarios revealing mark making and figures in landscapes or more abstract colour fields.
I find parallels to my approach in Renaissance illuminations in alchemical manuscripts, and I quote them indirectly in my work. This symbolic alchemical imagery addresses journeys of transformation, identities and evolution of consciousness. However, my interest here is to find new painterly ways to speak about these subjects, without referring literally to the ancient imagery.
Furthermore, a dialogue with Baroque, mythological and contemporary paintings, which address the subject of identity, allows me to be part of an ongoing living tradition. I am developing ways of rendering visible the elusive evolutions of identity.
The emotional dynamics of colour and how to contain and give form to what seems to evade representation are central to the work.
Marius von Brasch works from and lives in Rookley, Isle of Wight, UK
Education
2012 Completed practice-based PhD Fine Art at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton) on ‘Distance, however near it may be’: Revisiting ‘Aura’ on the Axis between Painting and Digital Technology within a Deleuzian Framework of ‘Becoming’
2009 MA Fine Art Painting with Distinction at Winchester School of Art
1987/88 Guest Student at Staedelschule Frankfurt am Main in the classes of Prof. Johannes Schreiter and Prof. Thomas Bayrle
Other qualifications
1999 Gestalt Therapist (Dipl) and Practioner of Postural Integration (Dipl), 3 year training at the École de Communication Créative in Strasbourg, France
1989 MA in German Literature, Philosophy and Musicology at J W Goethe University, Frankfurt
Solo exhibitions (since 2007)
2021 Othernight, The Bunker Gallery, Isle of Wight
2019 Liminal, Yellow Edge Gallery, Gosport
2019 Ennui Refigured. (2-person show with Freya Purdue), APT Gallery, Deptford, London
2017 Illumination (2-person show with Howard Hardiman), The West Gallery, Quay Arts, Newport (ACE funded)
2012 Distance however near it may be, The Winchester Gallery, Winchester
2009 Oedipus Diving, The Ropestore Gallery at Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight
2007 Oedipus Diving, Studio for Creative Communication Southsea (self curated)
Group exhibitions (since 2009, selection)
2021 The ArtTop10.com Lockdown Interviews Exhibition, Cello Factory, London
2021 The Waiting Place (curated by Ann-Marie James & Emily Godden), The Art Station, Saxmundham, Suffolk
2020 Beyond Other Horizons, Palatul Culturii, Iasi, Romania
2019 2022, Studio 2A, Isle of Wight
2019 Made in Britain. 82 Painters of the 21st Century. Priseman Seabrook Collection, Muzeum Narodowe, Gdansk, Poland
2017 Ex Roma IV, APT Gallery, Deptford, London
2016 Stories/Narrative, The Studio at Rookkley Manor, Isle of Wight
2015 The Drawing Process, The West Gallery at Quay Arts, Isle of Wight
2015 Belief, Depozitory, Isle of Wight
2015 A garden at the foot of every tree, The Studio at Rookley Manor, Isle of Wight
2014 Open Exhibition, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
2013 Friday 13th, Award Holders Exhibition at Gallery British School at Rome, Rome
2012 Visioneca, Experimental Film Festival, Isle of Wight
2012 The Lollipop People, Depozitory, Ryde
2012 Practice-based Projects, The Winchester Gallery, Winchester
2011 Rendition, Chapel Arts Studios, Andover
2011 Drawn, Five Years, London
2011 Feint, The Rag Factory, London
2011 Pre.Sense, Temporary Project Space (empty house), Headington, Oxord
2010 Out & About, Aspex Gallery Portsmouth, film screening in conjunction with the exhibition The Great Outdoors, Portsmouth
2009 Becoming/, Link Gallery at the University of Winchester, Winchester
Awards
2013 Abbey Fellowship Award for Painting – 3 months residency at British School at Rome
2009 Postgraduate Scholarship for PhD (Winchester School of Art – University of Southampton)
Work in Collections
Priseman Seabrook Collection UK
University of Essex: Modern and Contemporary British Art Collection
Klinik in der Zarten, Germany
Publications
2020 Beyond Other Horizons. Curated by Peter Harrap, Anna McNay & Florin Ungureanu. Editura palatul culturii, Iasi
2019 Made in Britain. 82 Painters of the 21st Century. Priseman Seabrook Collection, Muzeum Narodowe, Gdansk, Poland
2017 Illumination Marius von Brasch and Howard Hardiman. Catalogue for The West Gallery, Quay Arts, Isle of Wight
2014 Fine Arts 2013-14. Catalogue of British School at Rome @ The British Academy, London
2013 Affective Constructions – Fragmented Images on the Axis between Painting and the Digital in: Harland, B. (ed.) Behind the Eyes/Making Pictures. Research Group for Artists Publications
2012 ‘Distance, however near it may be’: Revisiting ‘Aura’ on the Axis between Painting and Digital Technology within a Deleuzian Framework of ‘Becoming’. Doctoral thesis for practice-based PhD access http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/346350/
2011 stalemate/escape. Essay for Feint: tackle/wield. Winchester Gallery Press
2009 Digital Economy and Memory. Essay for Research Anthology Winchester School of Art. Winchester Gallery Press
2007 Oedipus Diving. The Magical Forest Press, 2007. 64 page book with introduction and 46 colour plates
Workshops
2021 Painting and the Sublime - Landscape and mythology in paintings by Nicholas Poussin, The Fintry Trust
2020 Orpheus and Roses - Late poems of Rainer Maria Rilke in the paintings of Cy Twombly, The Fintry Trust
2020 Alchemical Meditation, The Fintry Trust
2020 Introduction to ‘Aurora Consurgens’, The Fintry Trust
2020 Introduction to ‘Splendor Solis’, The Fintry Trust
2018/19 Portfolio Presentation Course, Quay Arts, Newport, IOW
2016 Drawing/Painting from Within, Summer School at Quay Arts, Newport, IOW
2015/16 Becoming Visible, one-day courses at The Studio at Rookley Manor, IOW
2000-2008 Experiential Painting and The Art Within: one-day, weekend and 3-part workshop as well as monthly workhops throughout with same group at self-founded Studio for Creative Communication in Southsea, Hampshire
1994-2000 Various workshops and one-to-one work on ways of accessing and enhancing creativity via drawing, painting and Gestaltterapy
Curated projects
2016 Stories/Narrative, The Studio at Rookley Manor, IOW
2015 A garden at the foot of every tree, The Studio at Rookley Manor, IOW
2011 l launched susan projects (with Ella Clocksin) with Pre.Sense, curated by susan projects, temporary project space, Headington, Oxford
Work experience
2010 Part Time Lecturer in Fine Art at Winchester School of Art (BA/MA levels)
2000-2007 Founded Studio for Creative Communication in Southsea, Hampshire for art- and psychotherapy related practice and own workshop modules (Experiential Painting and The Art Within) with a studio for own art practice and exhibitions
1998-2004 Active involvement in the management of artist collective ArtSpace Portsmouth
Conferences
2020 Connected through culture | Paul Celan 100 - online conversation with curators Anna McNay and Peter Harrap, professor Gabriel H. Decuble and Dr. Marius von Brasch, organised by EUNIC Romania through British Council Romania and forumul cultural austriac, in partnership with Institutul Cultural Român / Romanian Cultural Institute and Romanian Cultural Institute in London.
2020 To Stand in the shadow of the scar - Language, Scattered Light and Time. On Reading Paul Celan. Paper for symposium Beyond Other Horizons, Palatul Cultrurii, Iasi, Romania
2013 Affective Constructions. Paper for symposium Behind the Eyes at North Gallery, Northumbrian University, Newcastle
2011 Flux and Fragment, 4th International Deleuze Studies Conference, Copenhagen
2009 Postgraduate Scholarship for PhD (Winchester School of Art – University of Southampton)
