About the work

Marc Bauer is known for his works in the graphic medium, primarily drawing.  

History and memory are central themes in Bauer’s work that consist, for a large part, of black and white drawings, but extends to animation film, ceramics, oil paint and sculpture. 

Bauer’s works are typically dark in tone and the contours of his figures are often blurred, through his practice of using a hard, thin eraser to rub away and smear the graphite and lithographic chalk and to achieve a sense of depth. This blurring effect partly gives Bauer’s drawings their distinctive ‘look’ and also subverts the traditional concept of the line as the defining element in the art of drawing. 

Date and country of birth

1975, CH

About the artist

Born 1975 Geneva, Marc Bauer lives and works in Berlin and Zurich. Graduated from BA Fine Art at HEAD Geneva (1999); and Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam (2004).

Bauer's work deals with the representation of history and memory, taking historical events and their documentation, reworking them in a drawing-based process, and placing them in new contexts.
The results of this approach are often presented in the form of installations, with drawings made on a range of materials: paper, aluminium, or straight onto the wall. Preceded by extensive research, Bauer's works present historiography as a construction that is always subject to personal interpretation.

Selected solo exhibitions includ L'Etat de la mer (Lame de fond, 2011-2020), FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand (2021); The Blow-Up Regime, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2020); Mi piace Commenta Condividi, a Rhetorical Figure, Istituto Svizzero Milano, Milan (2020); Mal-Ȇtre / Performance, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea (2020); Mal-Ȇtre / Performance, Drawing Room, London (2019); and Tracing Identities, Frieze Project, London (2017). Selected group exhibitions include Smoke and Mirrors: The Roaring Twenties, Guggenheim Bilbao (2021); Schall und Rauch, Die wilden Zwanziger, Kunsthaus Zurich (2020); United by AIDS-An about Loss, Remembrance, Activism and Art in Response to HIV/AIDS, Migros Museum, Zurich (2019); and SUPERPOSITION: Art of Equilibrium and Engagement, 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018).