Ruth Marten: Dream Lover

For the first time, Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR is showing a retrospective of works by American artist Ruth Marten (b. 1949), who has become famous for her surprising, witty and subversive treatments of old prints. Approximately 200 works on paper, paintings and objects spanning nearly five decades will be on display in Brühl until February 24, 2019.

Born in New York City, the artist, who still lives there today, began her career in 1972 as a tattoo artist, being one of the first women with this profession in the 1970s. At the 10th Biennale at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1977, during the same time her paintings were being displayed in the exhibition, she set up a stand where she tattooed men and women artists (among them, Marina Abramović). Likewise, her tattoo performance became a main attraction at the opening of the Punk Art Show the following year in Washington, D.C., where her installation was also showcased. Beginning in 1980, she worked as an illustrator for numerous magazines and journals (The New Yorker, Time Magazine / Time International and Entertainment Weekly), for book and music publishers, and now and then as a fashion illustrator (Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar).

The exhibition Dream Lover provides an insight into Ruth Marten’s exceptional oeuvre, for example, into her intensive artistic treatment of the theme of “hair,” which critically reflects her own experiences with social norms and ideals. The core of the presentation consists of works that have been created since 2006 in which the artist supplements illustrations, engravings, and postcards from bygone centuries by drawing on them or using them in collages.

Ruth Marten combines the material she departs from with motifs such as crocodiles, birds, mice or fashion accessories, whereby the transition from the original work to the reworked piece is, at best, detectible from close up, the result of her perfect imitations of the style of the template model. In this way, surreal situations and unreal atmospheres come about that are similar to the collage novels La femme 100 têtes or Une semaine de bonté by Max Ernst. Ruth Marten’s works bring together the historical and the modern to form a new, seemingly plausible present, in which dream combines with reality in a completely idiosyncratic way.

With respect to the exhibition title Dream Lover, Ruth Marten took her inspiration from the Bobby Darin song from 1959 by the same name: “I don`t want to dream alone.”

The exhibition Ruth Marten – Dream Lover has come about in collaboration with the artist on the occasion of her 70th birthday next year. It conveys for the first time an extensive insight into her work, one in which dream and reality unite in an entirely unique way.

To accompany the exhibition we are offering many further events, workshops for young people and adults as well as special programs and project days for schools. The exhibition catalogue consisting of 256 pages, ca. 200 reproductions and articles by Jürgen Pech, Achim Sommer, Friederike Voßkamp and Jürgen Wilhelm is available at the Museum Shop.