Above the Surface
Martin Werthmann is a German artist born in 1982, who mainly creates prints in very large formats. His work comes from the long German tradition of woodcuts which began with Albrecht Dürer and was taken up by the expressionists of the Die Brücke group, before reappearing in the work of contemporary artists like Anselm Kiefer, Gerd and Uwe Tobias. Martin Werthmann’s multi-coloured, multi-layered prints express the semiotic character inherent in everything. It is not because they contain a hidden message, waiting to be discovered, that these prints surprise the viewer, but because they open a polymorphic space for reflection that is solidified in a personal dialogue with the art.
