Berlin patina and high gloss

Sebastian Menzke (1979, Neubrandenburg) deliberately moves at the interface between painting and object in his artistic work. Starting from the canvas as a classic image carrier, he develops works that open up beyond the surface into space. His works combine color, material, and light to create multi-layered pictorial bodies that are less surface than spatial experience.

Menzke lives and works in Berlin. The city is his central source of inspiration - since his time as a graffiti artist, he has been fascinated by urban space. The restlessness and tension of big-city life are unleashed in his works, as is a certain Berlin nonchalance. Building facades, roughened by time, weather, and use - what he calls the “Berlin patina” -form a recurring visual resonance space. These are everyday urban impressions that he translates into an independent painterly language with his brush, through layers and overlays of material.

Characteristic of Menzke's work is an expanded concept of painting. In addition to classic canvas works, he creates relief-like wall objects and independent works made of epoxy resin, combining painterly and sculptural qualities. Oil, acrylic spray, resin, and fragments of other images are combined, superimposed, and recontextualized. Three-dimensionality is a recurring element that is deliberately employed and repeatedly broken up in perspective. The works oscillate between abstraction and figurative suggestion, developing a quiet, suspenseful dynamic.

Menzke's works were purchased by public institutions early on, including the Neubrandenburg Art Collection, the Cultural Foundation of Sparkasse Karlsruhe, and the Art Collection of the State of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. His artistic career has taken him to prestigious institutions such as the Residency at Künstlerhaus Lukas (Malmö, Sweden) and most recently as a “Rising Star Residency Artist” at the Till Richter Museum. His works are now represented in numerous private and public collections - a sign of the lasting relevance of his artistic position.

The E30 Gallery in Frankfurt presents Sebastian Menzke as a significant figure in contemporary art at the intersection of painting and object. His works, characterized by urban experience, a joy of material experimentation, and an object-like presence, open up an immediate, sensual access to contemporary art while offering a consistent, clearly recognizable artistic signature with institutional relevance.