Malcolm Morley: Sensations
Opening—28 April 2023, 6 PM
The crazier he was, the crazier the paintings. He was brilliant.
Brice Marden

Malcolm Morley, Lifeguard, 1988. © The Estate of Malcolm Morley. Courtesy Wendy Gondeln. Photo: Jens Ziehe

Malcolm Morley, Airlock, 2014. © The Estate of Malcolm Morley

Malcolm Morley, Piazza d’Italia with French Knights, 2017. © The Estate of Malcolm Morley
And so seeing work from a long time period together is pleasurable because not only do you see the diversity, you also see some fidelity…Things change, but they are still true to something. And with that you‘ve got it. Diversity and fidelity. – Malcolm Morley
The fundamental aspect, the motor that drove Malcolm‘s passion for painting, was sensation. Sensation being the unmediated bodily response to the outside world through the senses; in this case, the sense of sight. Malcolm admired the art of Van Gogh, Cézanne and Picasso, artists whom he felt were more concerned with presenting the world as something made with paint, to create a new visual experience, rather than being concerned with what the subject matter was ‘about’. Malcolm said he wanted to get the painting directly into the nervous system:
…the emphasis is very much on the idea of looking at. I paint them from the way in which I’m looking at them, which is really from the point of view of sensations. I feel the sensation of it, and pre-imagine it made of paint. …So it’s not just a question of looking, but of doing, in relation to this, in relation to that, in relation to the space between things. In a way, it’s very classical.

Installation view, Malcolm Morley, Malcolm Morley: Sensations, Capitain Petzel, Berlin, 2023. Ph: Gunter Lepkowski
Malcolm Morley takes the image, puts a grid on top of it, and numbers it. When he makes the painting, he is not actually seeing the image. He paints it in an abstract, not representational, mode. In his painting School of Athens (1972), based on Raphael’s painting, he was so caught up in filling out the little squares of his grid, one by one, that he only noticed later that a whole row was off, all the heads of the philosophers floating next to their respective bodies. And he decided that he liked the way it looked and left it. My father-in-law saw the painting in his studio at the time, and he told me that story. So by being concerned with precisely rendering the image, he happily loses it. The painting has a weird paradoxical beauty, neither figurative nor abstract—a painting about painting. I am interested in these broken moments and the unbelievable stubbornness in his work, the way he obsesses about the image and ignores it at the same time.
Charline von Heyl

Installation view, Malcolm Morley, Malcolm Morley: Sensations, Capitain Petzel, Berlin, 2023. Ph: Gunter Lepkowski

Installation view, Malcolm Morley, Malcolm Morley: Sensations, Capitain Petzel, Berlin, 2023. Ph: Gunter Lepkowski
As seen from a 60-year perspective, it seems that any material could be a potential painting for him; the range is overwhelming. But not everything was a final candidate for his painted world the images he chose were personal and idiosyncratic. Cézanne had his apples, Malcolm had his ships and airplanes from his childhood during WWII. These images were something that engaged Malcolm’s attention, as an affectionately-remembered association or attraction, and then as a rigorous collaborator that held up to his prolonged scrutiny during the diligent painting process.
The grid he used to format and scale up the images ensured that every square centimeter of the canvas received his focused attention, heightening the experience so that the finished painting represented his initial sensation with the same concentration. Each square was treated as a small abstract painting of its own, taken all together they make one unified area. Unity in diversity, diversity in unity.
Looking over the course of his oeuvre, one sees he had invented many styles of painting, from Photorealism, Neo-Expressionism, his own brand of Surrealism, and beyond, using a vast assortment of images (postcard images, cruise ships, advertising, beach scenes, airplanes, sports figures, motocross racers, knights, castles, etc.), always primarily committed to the sensation of seeing. The paintings are akin to the intense encounter a child has when experiencing the outside world for the first time. When the unknown, the unseen, or the overlooked makes its appearance. Malcolm lived and painted the seeming paradox of manifesting one’s innocence through a lifetime of experience.
Text by Michael Short
Curated by Michael Short in close collaboration with the Estate of Malcolm Morley, the exhibition includes loans by private collections, and will be accompanied by a publication surveying the artist’s work.
Malcolm was a great artist and one of the most purely creative and innovative painters I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. Just the other day I was contacted by a friend/young painter who is crazy about Malcolm’s work. He asked me if I thought the “art world” ever got Morley’s work. I replied that I wasn’t sure if Malcolm ever got Morley’s work.
Eric Fischl

Installation view, Malcolm Morley, Malcolm Morley: Sensations, Capitain Petzel, Berlin, 2023. Ph: Gunter Lepkowski
Everybody loved Malcolm, including myself. Liliane and I took the train out one night to his and Lida’s place on Long Island to play table tennis and talk about a trade, which was, sadly, never consummated. He was adored by other artists because he somehow was untethered, and his painterly invention and urban eccentricity were as free as the wind.
Sean Scully