Beyond the ideal
We present a series of works by Marius Seidlitz consisting of black-and-white portraits that deliberately refer to the pictorial tradition of the Old Masters while at the same time being anchored in a surrealistic visual language. In this new group of works, we encounter faces that are no longer faces: they appear as shiny, reflective shells. They protect by revealing nothing—and at the same time open up by reflecting the viewer's gaze back, like a mirror in which one sees without recognizing oneself.
A recurring motif is insects, which Seidlitz stylizes into artistic, almost baroque headdresses. This fragile and at the same time bizarre ornamentation sets a poetic counterpoint to the heaviness and dignity of traditional portrait painting, as well as to the austerity of the black-and-white palette. It stands for transience and transformation and breaks the seriousness of the portraits with a touch of surreal irony.
By reducing the images to black and white, they gain an additional tension: they appear timeless, iconic, almost photographic, yet at the same time distant and dreamlike. Color as a seducer and distraction is eliminated—what remains is the essence of line, contrast, and light.
The exhibition oscillates between attraction and distance: the portraits are magnificent, opulent, and imbued with old-master precision, yet they refuse to reveal anything personal or intimate. They do not show individuals, but rather projection surfaces that reflect the viewer back to his own perception.
Seidlitz's technical precision—honed by his experience as a master engraver—is combined with a free, expressive use of oil paint. In terms of composition, he draws on the classical pictorial structure of historical portraits: clear frontality, finely crafted materiality, and detailed attributes. At the same time, he translates these into a contemporary visual language that employs surrealistic refractions, iridescent surfaces, and unsettling details. The result is images that appear both familiar and foreign—between art-historical quotation and radical rupture, between representation and reflection, between beauty and refusal.