Review

Markus
Draper

From the Collection

In 2011 the Berlinische Galerie was given Markus Draper’s (*1969 in Görlitz) monumental installation Windsor Tower (2007) by a private collector. Together with recently acquired paintings the museum houses a representative body of work by the artist, which is going to be shown with an additional video-installation.

Drapers oeuvre embraces not only collage, painting and video, but also large-format installations for which he combines these different genres. A central theme is the destruction and the slow or abrupt decay of architecture, as well as its auratization through people and events. The artist develops a subtle play between mundane material (cardboard scraps, wood slats) and highly atmospheric content. The central work in the presentation in the Berlinische Galerie is Windsor Tower, a more than five metre tall reconstruction of the ruins of a now demolished building in Madrid, which caused worldwide headlines in 2005 through a disastrous fire. Grouped around this piece are further works whose references can be found somewhere between German Romanticism and contemporary media-images.