May 14, 2025

Norman Maýn: Fieldnotes

Norman Maýn
Fieldnotes

Opening: June 13, 2025, 18:00 – 21:00
Performance: June 13, 2025, 19:00 by Angelika Puff
Exhibition: June 14 – July 12, 2025
Mariannenstrasse 33, 10999 Berlin

“It feels like whatever I touch dies, I feed is poisoned, and the water I pour makes everything wither. I’m human; that’s my flaw. The fields behind me are empty. The drought remains.”

The perceived inability to protect and hold on to something results in the impossible attempt to do so, unalterably, always and everywhere. The disappointment in one’s own weakness turns all the suffering one witnesses into an endless horror. Relentless imposition of shame, disgrace, humiliation, exaltation, trauma and traumatizing others.

With Fieldnotes Norman Maýn observes and visualizes the fragility and discrepancy of the inner and outer self that we all know and that connects us all. We all have our memory boards, and from time to time, things cut deep into them as we wander through our fields. It leads us through unclear memories, fear, sickness, sensitivity, and insecurity. Above all, for Maýn every fault of our own person and humanity can be found in these notes, on this board, and in our surrounding. Every matter around us can be a mirror of our own and human traumas. At the same time, silence in nature can perform miracles but also show harshness. We all have our own and also collective fields through which we wander: Fields of memories, fulness, emptiness, fertility, drought … Fields of love and losses, battlefields … We invite you to wander through Norman Maýns personal ones.

In his first solo show, he offers an introduction to the variety of his interconnected media such as painting, photography, objects and sound in an intensive installation. In addition to this diversity of media, the exhibition includes selected works created over the past year in Maýn’s primary working environments: Germany (Berlin/Lusatia) and Spain (Andalusia/mainly).

Images © Norman Maýn.

Norman Maýn was born and grew up in Berlin. He studied at the Universität der Künste Berlin, where he already attracted attention with his graduation project Ghosts, a complex installation about the unreal existence of mistreated and abused spanish hunting dogs. He actually works in Germany (Berlin/Lusatia) and Spain (mainly Andalusia) and connects nearly every medium such as photography, painting, video, text, fragments, objects and transfers them into memorable installations that form comprehensive work cycles. It also happens that works cite each other, are expanded upon, or acquire a new context through reconsideration. He moves between the real and the surreal, personal and collective themes, abstract and precise, narrative such as mystery and removes the boundaries of established artistic areas. His works ritually address an archaic primal pain, discrepancies and areas of tension in human existence and rage on earth in context of saturated and at the same time empty societies. The clear lack of comprehensive descriptions of the postmodern world is translated in Maýn’s visual language particularly through reduction and omission, but also a grasp of fragile and seemingly quickly diffusing moments. Non-colors and raw materials determine the overall visual appearance. The tortured creature and human caused sorrow became central themes.

Works: