Berlin



Tómas Lemarquis, a distinguishing feature son of a French actor Gérard Lemarquis and mother from Island, is an artist that have always been very sensitive to the idea of patriotism and the idea of belonging to some place. Tómas is an international artist and multilingual speaking actor that belong to all of us. That is why Berlin suits him very well: this is the place where he actually lives right now. Berlin for Lemarquis has a quality of both, Reykjavík and Paris art slant circles. Nevertheless, it seems that quality of being from Reykjavik has installed a strong presence of nature, mountains and the sea. In addition, more or less, a quality of a big city like Paris, with all its varied culture gives him enough space to move around easily and create art without stress or pressure to be “contemporary accepted” as an artist. This is Tómas; Tómas is a freedom of choice and a dream of any artist. Free as a bird! No! In his case, free as a whale! Reykjavik is a whale country and Iceland is a very young volcanic land with oldest rocks in the world. Whales for Tómas are monsters of the sea and the sea the unconsciously never-ending theme of Tómas exhibitions. It had a lot of influence on his dreams that inspired his work. According to Tómas, “life and one's art is necessarily interconnected even if it's not absolutely on a conscious level. Even if Greenland and Iceland are very near to each other, they are often very different. It lies mostly in the difference of age.”


As a pretty well known visual artist, with an interesting statements in Berlin and on international art scene, the most known Tómas exhibition must be at Air Garten in Berlin, Monstera Deliciosa. A light box collages here present a literal process of building and figuratively constructing of himself as an artist. Great idea for sure for 21st century. The collages are interconnected via symbols drawn from his personal dreams and nightmares and from the twisted life situations. According to Lemarquis, these are part of the same vision are taking place in one dream, which is for him landscape of artistic context. Monstera Deliciosa is the name of his favorite plant, used appropriate for the exhibition, which is a try to approach the intimate demons with humor. Both the collages and his glass City are the play with light and making a dialogue in the space, but are different in the context. It seems that collages are more about submerging in the subconscious and finding old symbolical monsters. A starting point for this work was Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch uses symbols from alchemy, but with modern footage: a creations sweet and full of colors, but more closely with disturbing details. An issue often treated with humor among artists. All images are interconnected and creating its own symbolic art language. “It's a little bit like being stuck in one and the same dream where the surrounding is in perpetual change. The collages also contend with the impossibility of communication and understanding between people. Most of the characters seem to stare hysterically into emptiness without any clear purpose, being unable to communicate,“ said Lemarquis. “A little bit like the lack of communication and understanding that we can have with our own subconscious.”


There is also a bulb structure, a solo exhibition in Berlin Air Garten as part of the same project, which is architectural installation with 13 towers made of glass, light up from inside with different lamps in order to create a glass town that remains of an old Byzantine style Christian cathedral in Mosow. Work often described by the Berlin Press as futuristic film fantasy. Symbolically of course, entire installation has been described as the interpretation of a dream, due to light transparent towers that shine and reflect through a glass material that Tómas Lemarquis interrelates as psychoanalysis of himself. Like metaphor of light beings, here the communication is light, transparent, luminous: a vision of a lost illumines spiritual city that counterbalances the complication of language of his collages.


Reykjavik Kling & Bang

Tómas Lemarquis has worked with a range of medium by now: photography, painting, sculpture, film, etc. For what is worth, he collaborated with Ragnar Jónassonom on the project Burning stars from hell. An interesting project of well known Kling & Bang Gallery in Reykjavik. The project presents viewer physical enter into the box with moving pictures that are the mixture of puppet show for children and peep show for adults. Video installation inside of box is the place where two artists, the puppeteers, manipulate with different pictures. The show is radical freak show of a worldwide jet set and show business, presented with simple parody. Therefore, we have picture of English Queen that share her line of cocaine with Hitler and Britney Spears that throws up in the background. The exhibition is an exploration of pictures downloaded from Internet, different publications and personal data, where artist re-live via cartoon characters, in surreal scenes, concluding it with subconscious images (inspired with his own dreams): a subtle reference of hidden symbols also and reminds on distinguish details from the religious and classical paintings. His main tool is humor that catalysis his art practice.


Tómas Lemarquis is a product of deviant western culture and in this installation he works on the subject of world politics of military violence, sexual addiction and deviant human behavior. His explorations have tendency to create or define themes, rules and system of practice of his own subconscious artistic personal choices. Developing his pictorial practices toward something that remains on accumulation of chaos of Jerome Bosch, scenes shown on these photographic collages of Lemarquis represents feverishly dysfunction of nowadays communication and life, as the allegorical vision inspired by the idea of Carl Gustav Jung.


Finally, there is an interactive piece Superflash, also part of the same exhibition, where the visitor targets with binoculars and chooses image by pulling down an elastic band. He/she chooses one of 24 collage picture symbols from the fashion and flash magazines. The symbols are at first very likable and from far look like an entertaining fairground show, but as the viewer gets closer, the picture becomes an upsetting porn&hardcore image. This installation is more or less like game, imagined to bring up hostility toward magazines that promote body via pornography, pictures often promoted by the contemporary consumer culture. The elastic band is too short and the viewer cannot stop images coming out, and images are still there even if the viewers do not want that. The installation actually presents inability of individual to distant from the violent picture offered by the fashion-porn iconography in the contemporary world nowadays.


Physicality and Intellectual Perception

Tómas Lemarquis is actually very well known actor in Europe. Tómas www.tomaslemarquis.com graduated Icelandic School of Fine Arts 2000-2003 in Reykjavik, preparatory year for fine arts 1999-2000, and Cours Florent Drama School (where he studied with Audrey Tatou) and he fluently communicates on Icelandic/English/French/German/Danish. By now, Tomas won distinguish prizes and nominations such as Undine Award (Austrian TV Price), Best Actor in Nordic countries, Shooting Star 2004, representing Iceland European film promotion program and
European Film Awards in Berlin 2003. He was also nominated for the European actor award and the people’s Choice Award, Edduverdlaun (Icelandic Oskar) in October 2003. His latest film conquests are: film called Chatrak or Mushrooms directed by film director from India Vimukthi Jayasundara, Errors of the Human body, German/American film shoot in Dresden Germany. and film Painless directed by Spanish Juan Carlos Medina. In my interview with Tomas, I reckon a strange contradiction. He has always been attracted to physicality, both as an actor and a visual artist. For him, this language can often communicate more than words. A little gesture can tell all about character or feelings more than words. It comes before the intellectual, where sense of another person via body and aura make an intellectual impact. Working on body and perception is very important for Tómas in order to get to understand the senses, which goes further than the limitation of language.


Tómas follow different kinds of impulses, even if they do not fit into what the logical mind might clarify as "good" or "bad." For him, there is just an impulse that he follows, something that is vitally important for artist.