Martin Denker represents a new generation of German artists. Inspired by the music sampling techniques employed by deejays, Denker’s latest work combines multiple layers of different imagery to change original optical perceptions into new time-space situations where the phenomenon of pictorial space appears as a crossroads of diverse strands of visual information. His work is truly unique from all that is being produced.
A glance at Denker’s pictures is enough to wonder about the origin of the images. It is important that one cannot classify Denker. He is not a photographer in the conventional sense and not a painter who has found photography as an extension of his potential. There is no word yet for the way in which Martin Denker works and develops his large-scale photographs. Strictly speaking, they are gigantic collages holding multiple layers on top of each other, which represent the only type of expression Martin Denker can effectively use to translate the way he experiences the world.
Denker’s restless view of the world is not new, but it is different. It is the view of a solitaire who doesn’t belong to a school or grouping and yet can’t deny the base of history—so Joseph Cornell’s boxes or the brilliant interwovens by Robert Rauschenberg are actual predecessors of such an individual perception. Closer yet is the world of Takashi Murakami, which has already become the concretely realized image of an extensive fantasy, the draft of its own world. Beyond these relationships, the pictures of Martin Denker also have a vulnerability deriving from the artist’s right to show society their actions just like a mirror.
Martin Denker was educated at the Art Academy of Duesseldorf as a master student of Thomas Ruff. After assisting Andreas Gursky since 2002, Denker quit in 2007 to concentrate fully on his own work.