For many years, Maik Wolf has been a permanent member of Galerie Michael Schultz’s artists. Born in Pirna in 1964, he studied at the Hochschule für Kunst und Design in Halle and at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He lives and works in Berlin.
Maik Wolf remains true to his characteristic painting style: he piles up color, shapes and structures so far in and against each other that complex worlds arise; although based on realities, they are never actual views of landscapes.
The artist uses real source images from original photographic prototypes as a substrate on which his pictures grow, on which individual picture elements expand, but also grow apart, and flourish. There is a kind of optical whirling above the water, a constant becoming of the forms that suggest organic growth through technical elements. Stylistic quotes in the form of icons or speech bubble-like shapes from the world of games and graphic design expand the painterly repertoire.
In this new series, Maik Wolf has once again found further ways of interpreting landscape architecture, meanwhile reducing his typical captioning, comic-like symbols, and bringing surreal buildings to the forefront.
Wolf's title system for his paintings is highly complex, however extremely logical. Following the collage principle, analogous to the creation of his paintings, he combines word creations from various contents. His titles are freely associated with the respective image content; they strive to take up the order system within the series contextually.
The painterly role models, paired with quotations from computer-game aesthetics of virtual worlds, transform Maik Wolf's cosmos into Magical Realism.